Luna Who?
by AmityRavenclawElf
Summary: What sort of wizard uses science instead of spells? And what sort of Muggle flies around in a blue box? Luna Lovegood was nine years old when she first met the Doctor. From there, it's all good fun...in time and space.
1. Chapter 1

Luna Lovegood was nine when she first encountered the man in the blue box.

Specifically, she was still wearing the black dress from her mother's funeral. That wasn't much of a time marker, though; she wore the dress for quite a while, just as a reminder. She did tend to forget the most important things...And it was always unpleasant when she remembered again...

But more to the point, on this particular evening, she was barefoot, sitting on an abnormally large derigible plum and imagining that the sun was really a creature that was devouring everything on the horizon. She was tracing its path with her fingers when the Thing dropped from the sky, landing only a hillside away.

Stunned and excited by the new occurance, Luna ran nearer the thing. It was when the hill peaked under her that she saw that the Thing from the sky was a blue Police Box.

How delightfully odd.

She skipped closer to the Police Box, attempting to open the door (Perhaps it could be explored.), but it was locked rather tightly. Then there was a sound behind her- almost a buzzing -and a clipped metallic voice shouted at her, "EXTERMINATE!"

Luna turned and fixed her large eyes on a sort of salt-shaker-shaped hulk of metal, complete with a light just in front and what looked an awful lot like a weapon pointed directly at her face.

"Sorry," she said cordially. "I didn't quite catch that."

"EXTERMINATE!" the creature or object repeated eagerly.

"Oh, goodie," Luna droned, hoping to buy time. She was effectively pinned between the Police Box door and the unfriendly metal thing. "Who are we exterminating?"

"YOU! WILL! BE! EXTERRRRRRMINATED!"

Luna cocked her head sideways, feeling threatened and immediately endangered but not particularly afraid. "Well, you haven't done it yet," she pointed out. "And anyway, we've hardly gotten to know each other."

The light on the metal thing moved a bit, vertically, and the motion caused Luna to wonder whether this was how the creature looked her up and down. "MOVE! AWAY! FROM THE! TARRRRDIS!" the tinny voice ordered.

"And then I get to be exterminated?" she asked, feigning alacrity.

"YOU! WILL! BE! EXTERRRRMINATED!" the thing- she decided to call it a Snorcack -confirmed.

That's when the blue door to the blue box opened, and a hand attached to an arm yanked Luna in and shut the door behind her. The man attached to the arm attached to the hand sighed in relief, and Luna looked past him to see that the blue box was attached to a much larger inside.

"Extension Charm," she observed.

The man looked down at her incredulously. He had an odd sort of face, almost like a cartoon rabbit, with a wide-ish nose and a prominent-ish chin. His hair was grown out and dark, and he seemed young, but in an old sort of way. His eyes were old.

Without warning, the blue box man began waving a sort of wand at her. It made whirring noises and lit up and looked...well, not very wandlike at all.

"Yes. Human," he said. "Definitely human. Who are you?"

"Luna Lovegood," the small girl answered, tucking back her dirty blond hair and holding out her hand to shake.

The man chose, instead, to grab her hand and examine it. "Still definitely human. Did you just stall a _Dalek?"_

Luna considered that. "Possibly. Did you just save my life?"

"Probably. No. Scratch that: Definitely. You were definitely going to die. Oh...Is that rude to say? I can never tell..."

"So let's have tea, then, yeah? My dad's home...He's made pudding."

"He-" The man stopped himself by smacking a hand to his head. "Alright. Rewind:I'm the Doctor."

"Doctor? That's an odd sort of name. That's like a Muggle Healer. Are you a Muggle?" She looked around the Tardis control room and shook her head at the thought. "Odd sort of Muggle."

"I'm not-...Alright. Rewind again. There is a Dalek outside, and..." The TARDIS shook with a sudden blast that sent Luna and the Doctor to the floor. Instantly, the Doctor was back on his feet and running to the controls. "Scratch that," he murmured. "There are _many_ Daleks outside." He started up darting restlessly from lever to lever to switch to screen. Definitely an odd sort of wizard, if he was one.

"Don't you know any spells?" Luna asked conversationally.

"Don't _you?"_ the Doctor deflected back. "You're a witch, aren't you? That's a thing in this universe."

"I haven't got a wand yet," Luna pointed out. "You have."

"I...No, it's not a wand. It's a sonic screwdriver."

"Well, that doesn't sound nearly as useful. Where's your wand?"

"I haven't got one."

"So you _are_ a Muggle."

"No...I mean...Look, I just..."

The Doctor rambled on incoherently like that, but Luna was dazzled by a sudden wonderful thought: "Are you a time lord?"

The Doctor paused at the TARDIS controls and looked back at her, peculiarly. "How do you know about time lords?"

"My mum knew about them. She was an expert."

"Was? So she's dead now?"

Luna nodded blankly.

The Doctor looked as though he were on the verge of saying something, but then the TARDIS controls made a strange noise, and his expression turned to utter exasperation. "Oh, not now..." he murmured almost feverishly.

"What?" Luna asked, approaching him.

"So, your dad," the Doctor said, regaining his energy, "is he cool? Like, really, really...cool?"

Luna just stared at him.

The Doctor rushed on, and Luna observed that he seemed uncomfortable keeping still. "Like, would he mind if-?...Oh, blast it." He pulled a lever to his right, and the TARDIS gave a lurch, almost sending Luna to the ground again, but this time, the Doctor caught her arm.

"What's happening?" she asked, almost to quietly to be heard over the whirring engine.

"We're escaping. No choice. Surrounded by Daleks...I daresay this sort of thing happens to me much too often."


	2. Chapter 2

The next several minutes consisted of the Doctor running about, reading off of screens, and occasionally swearing in Gallifreyan. It was a while before he looked up and noticed that the little blond-haired girl, Luna Lovegood, was sitting on the floor, reading from a book that she had not been holding when she entered the TARDIS.

"Oi!" the Doctor called out, and Luna looked politely up at him with her big, batty eyes. "Where'd you get that?"

"Your library," she answered dreamily. "Do you know the hallway changes? I half-thought it was a wrackspurt-"

"A what?"

"...a wrackspurt, messing with my brain, but it wasn't. The corridors really change."

"Why were you in the corridors? Do you know the sorts of things that come out of corridors?"

Luna waved the book in the air demonstratively.

"No, I mean _besides_ that-"

"What are you doing?" the girl digressed, tucking the book under her arm and getting to her feet.

"I'm trying to find someplace to land us that won't result in a time paradox or a Dalek attack...Don't touch anything!" he added as Luna neared the controls. She obediently folded her hands behind her back, book tightly clasped.

"I don't think you're doing a very good job," she confided.

"Yes, I know that! Thank you!"

The TARDIS gave another lurch, sending both girl and Doctor tumbling to the floor. Both were up again soon enough. Luna, after locating her borrowed book on the floor, cracked it open again and strode out of the Doctor's line of sight. He was honestly too distracted to stop her.

"Mr. The Doctor!" her voice called out. "Sir, I think you should try this lever."

"What lever?"

"Over here. This book says-"

The TARDIS gave yet _another_ lurch...or, well, sort of a half-lurch. It started to lurch, and then it unexpectedly righted itself and started sailing swiftly towards some unknown destination.

"What?" the Doctor said aloud.

"Sorry," came the girl's voice from somewhere on the floor. "I touched something."

"What did you do?"

"Well, I was pointing at the lever and the TARDIS moved..."

"What lever?" the Doctor hurried over and helped the girl to her feet. Her eyes were impossibly bright.

She pointed out the lever that she had accidentally pushed. "Maybe the TARDIS wanted me to push it."

"The TARDIS-?" The Doctor was surprised. Most companions didn't immediately decide that the TARDIS was capable of conscious decision.

Not that this girl was a companion.

Still, all the same...

Luna continued: "Well, it sent me to the library, helped me find this book, and then it made me push the lever."

The Doctor placed a soothing hand on his TARDIS. "What are you doing, old girl?" he murmured to it.

He received no answer; instead, they slammed to a halt.

The Doctor opened the TARDIS door warily. The outside seemed safe enough- a cobblestone pathway between rows of warm-looking shops and taverns. He stepped out, slipping his hand into that of the small girl, who followed curiously behind him.

"Out you go...I don't suppose this is Diagon Alley?"

The girl shook her head.

"Don't suppose you have any idea where this is?"

She shook her head again. "Can't you find all that out?"

"Of course!" He released her hand in order to ruffle her hair before taking off at a run toward the nearest tavern.

Luna's expression turned contemplative, and she turned to reenterer the TARDIS.

"Come on then, Lovegood!" the Doctor called.

"I'm going back to the library!" she answered back. "Maybe the TARDIS has another book for me!"

"Right, then! Just stay where you are once you get there." He disappeared around a corner, then.

Luna turned on her heels and found that somebody had shut the TARDIS door, and it was now tightly locked once more. "Mr. The Doctor?!" she called out, then turned around another ninety degrees to find her path blocked by a man in a black trenchcoat and top hat.

"The Great Intelligence has need of you," the man droned, reaching for her as though he planned to sieze her head like a crystall ball.

Luna looked around and found herself entirely encircled by other men in trenchcoats, although the others lacked faces.

Trapped again. She was back to square one.


	3. Chapter 3

Luna approached the nearest faceless man in wonder.

"I suppose we all have need of great intelligence," she mused in response to The Man With The Face's ominous remark. "I've never heard it in reverse, though." She moved on to the next faceless man. "What does that mean: Great Intelligence had need of me?"

"I need a versatile and youthful mind," The Man With The Face replied gravely. "This form does little for me, now."

The circle of faceless men tightened, drawing Luna closer to the speaker.

She kept as much distance as she could, but also scrutinized the man. "Are you The Great Intelligence, then? What a funny name."

"I-"

"Not that it's not admirable. 'Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure', as they say."

"I-"

"Have you met Rowena Ravenclaw? She had great intelligence, too."

_"I_ am a being of unspeakable power."

_Is this actually working? _Luna wondered. _Is he still talking? _She oriented herself nearer to the TARDIS door, all the while keeping up a steady babble. "The mind _is_ a powerful thing. 'Knowledge is power'. That's another phrase. There are plenty of those, really. 'Mind like a steel trap'. 'Tamper with the deepest mysteries- the source of life, the essence of self-'. 'The mind is a palace'."

Then, The Man With The Face grabbed ahold of Luna. The moment his hand touched the skin of her upper arm, a bolt of pain shot up her spine to her brain, and her screams filled the alley.

...

The people in the tavern were very nice. Except, the Doctor noted, they weren't exactly "people". And they tried to kill him.

But the beverages were good.

"Yes! Rum!" he exclaimed to a barmaid with tentacles growing out of her face. "Brilliant! Loads of rum! I love rum. What exactly is rum? I used to know..." _Alas_, he thought, _I used to know a lot of things, but the mind can get slippery, especially where alcoholic beverages are concerned._

The barmaid clanked the jug onto the bar in front of him.

"Wonderful," the Doctor said more quietly. "Thank you. Say...what planet is this?"

The barmaid gave a snort and walked away (slunk away, really).

"Fine then," the Doctor muttered to no one. A smile was tugging at the corners of his lips. "Force me to do a bit of exploring, why don't you."

That was when one of the bar patrons grabbed the Doctor by the shoulder, quite roughly, and turned him around. "Doctor!" the creature yelled, his countenance unfriendly...or was that just his face? Hard to tell.

The Doctor responded with a smile and a sly movement that transitioned the creature's strong hand from his shoulder to his jug of rum. "Yes. That's me. Who are you? Wait, let me guess...You're the guy in charge, yes? Of course you are. You've got loads of badges...gotta love badges...Say, where am I?"

The creature snarled, hefted an axe, and again yelled, "Doctor!"

"Got it. Not friends." The Doctor ran, weaving between groups of creatures and out the tavern door. The creature with the badges did not cease his pursuit.

The time lord was nearly to the TARDIS when he saw the little blond girl, Luna, collapsed just an inch away from the blue box door. Again the Doctor cursed in Gallifreyan before scooping the child up, fumbling the TARDIS door open, entering, and shutting the door behind them.

Once they were shut in, the girl opened her batty eyes. "What happened?" she asked in her dreamy voice.

"I was going to ask you that," the Doctor rambled, setting the girl down on her feet and rushing to the TARDIS controls. "I don't know. I was in a pub and you passed out."

"I remember you leaving..." Luna pondered a bit. "I remember it feeling like something sucked the breath out of me, or like I caught a thousand wrackspurts all at once."

"Bad News Planet," the Doctor concluded breathlessly. "Let's go."

The TARDIS jolted skyward.

Luna sat down cross-legged. "Thank you, Mr. TARDIS," she sighed, petting the wall.

"'Mister'? She's a girl," the Doctor corrected the child incredulously.

Luna angled her head a bit and smiled. "How can you tell?"

"I-" The Doctor was briefly stumped. "She just is."

"Is TARDIS her whole name?" Luna asked.

"No. TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Her name is-" The Doctor stopped himself. "She...erm...doesn't have a name."

Luna opened her mouth to speak, but then she went very white and fell limp.

"Lovegood?!" Panicked, the Doctor ran to her side.

She was out cold, but her mouth began to speak on its own, with her voice: "I'd like to speak to the Doctor."

The time lord's face darkened, and his tone was gravely confident, his voice lowered, when he answered: "I'm listening, whoever you are."

...

Luna's eyes opened to the Doctor's pale face. He was staring at her, and she didn't remember falling asleep. She was also unsure as to why the Doctor looked so grim. There must have been something dreadfully wrong with her. Narrowing her eyes, she hazarded a guess: "Wrackspurts, right?"

The Doctor shook his head. "The Great Intelligence is now living inside your head," he told her. "Apparently, you're a being of great power."

"I'm a witch," Luna replied with a perplexed look.

"Half," the Doctor answered cryptically. Then he sprang to his feet, suddenly all energy again. "Alright, then, Lovegood, sit tight and think happy thoughts."

Luna stood as well. "Alright then. What'll you do?"

"The Great Intelligence has given me coordinates, and he really won't be glad he did."

"Coordinates where?"

With one hand on the TARDIS console, the Doctor turned around and smiled like the mad man he was. "Your mind," he said. Then the TARDIS sailed off.


	4. Chapter 4

"You're going to land the TARDIS in my mind?" Luna asked, looking truly surprised for the first time today.

"Going to try to," the Doctor panted back as he literally sprinted about the controls.

"Will I still get to walk around and things?"

"Luna Lovegood, you sound like Martha."

"Martha who?"

"Oh, _now_ you do the thing." He yanked at a lever.

"How does that work? The mind thing?"

The Doctor paused just long enough to answer, "A mind is like a TARDIS: bigger on the inside and many places at once. But the most important thing for you to remember, Lovegood, is that it's _your _mind. The Great Intelligence can't put anything there that isn't there already, but once it's there, it's a weapon that he can use against you."

Luna blanched but nodded pensively. "It works the other way, too, though, doesn't it?"

"Exactly!" the Doctor agreed brightly, and he ruffled her hair once more before returning to his sprinting and lever-pulling. "Now, we need a landing strip here...Can you think up maybe a really sunny meadow?"

Luna conjured up all of her focus. Blue sky, loads of grass and flowers...bunnies...

The TARDIS slammed into the ground, jarring her.

"Oh dear." The Doctor scratched at his prominent chin. "Sorry about that. Now, let's go, Ravenclaw!"

"What?"

"What? Come on, get a move on!"

Luna clambered to her feet and met the Doctor at the door.

"Think meadowy thoughts," the time lord reminded her before opening the door...

...to a beautiful, green meadow.

Luna sighed in relief and followed the Doctor out into the sun and the blue.

Then she saw the woman. She was tall, with long, brown hair, and clad in a bright blue sundress. She danced about and laughed as though the wind were whispering wonderful things in her ears.

Luna inhaled. "Mum?" she called out, but the familiar woman didn't hear her.

At the same time, however, the Doctor, in a perplexed voice, called out, "Clara!"

Luna shrieked louder, "Mummy!"

The woman at last turned to look at her daughter, only to vanish into thin air immediately after.

"No!" Luna shouted, then concentrated on conjuring her mother up again. No matter how hard she focused, nobody appeared. She felt tears sting her eyes, which was new for her; she didn't normally cry. That was her dad's job. Her job was to stay happy.

With this in mind, she shuddered and wiped the tears away. She could feel herself becoming angry, but she suppressed it.

Suddenly, however, the ground where her mother had been standing split open, sending a crack travelling through the rolling hills and separating Luna and the Doctor.

"Lovegood!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Calm down!"

"I am!" she replied as the chasm betwixt them grew.

"Only on the outside," the Doctor called. "We're on the inside."

Luna nodded slowly. "That makes sense." She felt another tear run down her cheek, and she allowed it, focusing instead on breathing, making peace inside of her.

The ground stopped splitting, but the Doctor was out of sight. Before her was a vast sea. She pursed her lips and shouted out, "This is my mind!", and her voice echoed and reverberated throughout all corners of the world on which she now stood. "You can't win inside my own mind!"

That was when she experienced the familiar breathless sensation and passed out again.

...

When the ground stopped moving, the Doctor found himself in an odd sort of marsh...Well, "odd" was a relative term. It had all of the murkiness characteristic of your run-of-the-mill marsh, but it was filled with whispering voices and shimmering faces that appeared and disappeared in the blink of an eye, like wil-o-the-whisps.

The Doctor straightened his bow tie and was about to enter the marsh when a familiar voice spoke behind him: "They're wrackspurts."

Turning around, the Doctor saw Clara Oswald, only dressed in a blue gown and drifting like a ghost or a siren. "What?" he said.

"The voices," Clara answered. "They're wrackspurts. The glowing things are nargles."

"Clara?" the Doctor murmured. _Alright, so there's another version of Clara floating about who is Luna Lovegood's mother, _he thought._ So what? That's how time streams work. _"What are wrackspurts and nargles?"

"When the wrackspurts get louder, you'll know you're close," Clara said, her form flickering, "but don't listen to them, or you'll lose your mind."

"Funny thing, a mind," the Doctor rambled. "Always a thing you find when you're not looking for it."

"Clever boy," Clara sighed, then vanished.

"Oh, come on!" the Doctor called out plaintively. Then he squared his shoulders, shook out his arms, and started into the marsh.

...

Luna woke with a start and found herself bound in a room that resembled her own, only gigantic and dark. She stood, faintly aware of the cold against her bare feet, and stuggled physically and mentally against the ropes that bound her wrists._ This is my mind, and in my mind, I choose NO ROPES._

It seemed that the darkness was laughing at her. The voice was very deep and eerie. "Of course I can not kill you," it mused, "but I can keep you trapped here, in the midst of your greatest fears, tucked away within the shadowy regions of your mind."

Luna took a deep breath and thought that over. "Honestly, trapped is trapped, isn't it? Why go to the trouble of keeping me in a nightmare when you could just let me stumble about aimlessly? You don't need me to suffer."

The reply was brief and malevolent: "I get bored."

Then a chill fell over Luna, and something crept out of the shadows.

It was a human, and, despite the dim lighting, it seemed familiar.

"Dad?" Luna said cautiously.

Then the figure fell to its knees and started convulsing, morphing, growing. Horns sprouted from its head, and its back arched, and fangs grew from its face.

Luna didn't hesitate to run, but it was like dream-running; her position in relation to everything else in the room didn't change. Not really.

So instead, when the Crumple-Horned Snorcack bounded toward her, she sat down cross-legged, closed her eyes, and dreamed of sunlight.


	5. Chapter 5

The Doctor was able to ignore the wrackspurts up to the point at which they started whispering names.

_"Rose Tyler."_

_"Martha Jones."_

_"Donna Noble."_

Then, like a fool, he stopped. "How are those names here?" he demanded. "This is Luna's mind! She doesn't know those names."

Then the voices changed:

_"When was the last time you danced?"_

_"He never looked at her twice."_

_"Donna Noble has been saved."_

"LUNA LOVEGOOD DOES NOT KNOW ANY OF THIS!" the Doctor shouted.

The deep voice of the Great Intelligence replied, seemingly emitted by the trees: "No, but I do."

"You're inside her mind," the Doctor protested. "Nothing can exist inside her mind that she doesn't know about."

"She put the wrackspurts here, which are creatures which have access to one's thoughts. I only made use of them."

_"Goodbye, sweetie."_

"I'm not listening!" the Doctor declared firmly, then strode on, reaching for his screwdriver to run a scan on his surroundings.

His screwdriver was not in his pocket. He backtracked, searching the ground, and one of the glowing creatures appeared right in front of his face before vanishing.

"Nargles are certainly mischievous creatures, aren't they?" the Great Intelligence intoned gaily.

The Doctor's face went almost blank, which was never good. "Give me back my screwdriver, and, while you're at it, leave Luna Lovegood alone, or you'll really regret it."

"I will?" the voice chuckled, and, suddenly, hundreds of glowing faces appeared all around the Doctor, snarling.

On this cue, the time lord chose a direction and ran.

...

Instead of opening them, Luna shut her eyes tighter. The Snorcack was breathing down into her face, and there didn't seem to be any light outside.

"Mr. The Great Intelligence?" she said quietly.

"Yes?" the voice replied.

"Sir, you can't kill me inside my mind."

"I can't?" The voice feigned disappointment.

"No." _Her_ voice cracked.

"Why can't I?"

Luna found the courage to open her eyes, then. The Snorcack was still there, still terrifying in theory, but she stood and placed a gentle hand on its nose. The creature stilled. "Because this is my mind," she whispered, crooning, sort of, to the beast. Then she wrapped her arms around its neck and pressed her face into its side. It tensed, but she remained where she was. "My mind," she said again, "and I'm not afraid of you."

The Snorcack disappeared, and the world seemed to swirl around Luna.

She shouted into the abyss, "My mind won't hurt me!"

The Great Intelligence answered smugly, "I will."

Then she ground vanished from under her, and she was falling.

_"I'm not falling," _she decided aloud. _"I'm flying."_

And her surroundings chose to agree with her; suddenly, she realized that gravity was going the other way, and she was really only flying upside-down.

"Silly girl," the Great Intelligence said impatiently. "_Everything_ here will hurt you."

Then she landed in a meadow- a different meadow than before -full of bright red flowers like something out of a Muggle film...and Daleks. Lots and lots of Daleks.

"EXTERMINATE!" they all shouted at the same time, and Luna smiled a little because she'd been through this before; Daleks were so, so easy to stall.

Then she saw that they weren't aiming at her; they were aiming at her parents. Her mother, small and beautiful, and her father, lean and smiling. Oblivious. And then every weapon went off at once, and they were gone.

"No!" Luna screamed, and thunder and lightning tore the sky. She crumpled to the ground and hugged her knees to her chest. _It's not real, _she reminded herself, and the words rang audibly here. _It's not real._

"It's very real," the Great Intelligence argued. "Your reality exists in your mind. Unfortunately, I own it now."

And then Luna felt a bit of very real fear, because she knew exactly what existed in her mind. She knew _exactly_.

On cue, a swarm of cornish pixies assaulted her, tugging at her hair and scratching at her face, aiming, it seemed, for her eyes. She curled into fetal position.

"You said that your mind won't hurt you," the Great Intelligence said, "but that's all it will do. It will torture you and tear at you and plague you forever, and there's nothing you can do about it."

_THIS ISN'T REAL! _Luna's mind yelled, and Luna, herself, called out, "The question, then, becomes: What's in it for you? What do you want with me?"

"I've told you: The Great Intelligence needs a new host. Your fear is merely for fun."

"By _host_, you mean _body_. So you can control me in here. Right?"

There was no reply, but Luna's heartbeat had accelerated, and it rocked the world, blurring lines everywhere.

_"A mind is like a TARDIS,"_ Luna whispered, gradually working it out. _"It's bigger on the inside and many places at once. So right now, I'm inside of another me. A me that you're controlling."_

"Very clever," the Great Intelligence intoned blandly.

Luna stood, and the cornish pixies promptly heightened their attack on her. "Mr. The Great Intelligence, you shouldn't have brought me here," she told him softly, "because I'm about to help me destroy you." Then she ran into the darkest shadow and disappeared.

...

When the Doctor cleared the last of the trees, he found himself in the same meadow as before, TARDIS and all.

"What?" he said allowed.

Clara appeared to him, then. Her expression was far more urgent, this time, and she handed him a stick...no, a wand. "Take this," she ordered him.

"But...No," he protested. "I'm not a wizard. I don't need a wand; I need my screwdriver."

"You can't get your screwdriver back until Luna gets her mind back," Clara said quickly. "You have to find her, and you have to give her this."

"Where is she?" the Doctor asked.

"The wind will take you there. The Great Intelligence wants you to find him. Run." Clara placed her hands on either side of his face and said, earnestly, "Run, you clever boy, and find my daughter."

...

When Luna emerged from the shadow, she found her bare feet smacking against some sticky sort of mud.

_Quick sand? _was the first thing she thought, and immediately after, the mud started to swallow her.

_Stupid, _she cursed herself, and a chorus of insults hurled themselves at her from the darkness._ Stupid girl. How can you win? You will fail. The Great Intelligence will always be stronger._

"That's not me," Luna said serenely. "I can tell when it's my voice and when it's yours." She had sunk to her knees, now, and the sand was speeding up.

_Fine, then, I'll just sink, _she decided. _I'll sink into the underneath and see where I land. You can't scare me, Mr. The Great Intelligence._

And then her mouth was under, and her nose, and her eyes, and the top of her head, and she landed...Well, it wasn't really landing. It was more like hanging suspended in darkness. But she could breath, so that was good. She swam through the dark, and then a scream cut through the air, startling her so much, she couldn't focus on her inner peace. She started to fall.

The scream was her mother's. It was the same scream that she'd heard that afternoon when she went to call her mother to lunch only to find...

_This. Is. Not. Real._

Luna stopped thinking, stopped remembering, stopped fearing, stopped everything, and just breathed. She put her mind on pause and focused on air. Her falling stopped, the screaming stopped, but the Great Intelligence's voice started to speak.

"Clearing your mind, little girl? Thanks. I needed that."

And Luna felt as though some sort of potion had been spilled all over her, because her skin began to burn, and all she could do was writhe in midair. "Ssssssstop," she panted.

"Do you want to see the you that you are in this time?" the Great Intelligence purred, and then a light seemed to come on and Luna saw...her own face. Only, she was older, and there were scars, and she was dirty and slumped against a mirror, panting and looking haunted.

"Luna?" the voice belonged to a boy with brown hair and a kind, round face.

"Neville," the older Luna said in a distant voice, trying to maintian a smile while an all-out war went on inside of her mind.

"Are you alright?" the boy, Neville, asked. "Was it the Carrows?"

"I'm-"

The light went out, and young Luna found herself suspended in darkness again.

"Dear me," the Great Intelligence droned with mock-pity. "I think you've just been caught by the Death Eaters."

"Death Eaters?" Luna repeated, alarmed. _Voldemort comes back?_

But then she regained control of herself. This was what he wanted. He was thriving on her fear.

Whatever potion or acid that had been pouring on her skin began to itch and burn at her muscles. She let loose a sob. "You c-can't kill me inside my mind," she said, and she was mildly chagrined to find that she was sort of whimpering. "I saw myself grown up. That means I m-make it through this."

"Yes, but you've seen what you become," the Great Intelligence replied, almost soothingly. "Does it matter?"

Luna felt her eyelids shutting.


	6. Chapter 6

For a terrifying moment, Luna thought that it was all over.

Then she remembered who she was and what she did when she was afraid or in pain: She put the thoughts away.

She wasn't brave- No, she would never call herself _brave _-but she had a great big mind with loads of hidey holes. She only had to find one...

...as her skin burned under the darkness and the potion and what sort of potion could that be? Obviously toxic, but was the source of this pain, this burning..._Don't think about the burning!_...Did it come from heat? Or venom of some kind? It wasn't as though she had taken a Potions class. Not that she thought she'd like Potions...not much, at least...it was fine as an idle passtime, sort of like baking a derrigible plum pie, but as an actual study it seemed much too stressful. Charms, now that was a class she expected to enjoy. Herbology as well; she had always loved gardening. What else was there? Defense Against the Dark Arts, of course...the one that was being taught by a vampire, as her father had informed her (in confidence). There was that rune study class...What was it called?

The sizzling pain stopped and the wind was knocked out of her as she dropped to the ground someplace. Immediately she felt as though gravity had split so that there was the ordinary force pulling her down and a slightly lesser force dragging her sideways. (That would've hurt quite a bit, the dragging, if the ground didn't seem to be mostly devoid of friction.) As she tumbled along, the scenery stunned her by offering forth the most random conglomeration of images.

Oh. She was in _this _part of her mind, which, she noted, might be worse than the dark, scary part, because this part would be hard to escape. Already errant thoughts were _What is that? _interrupting her logical _I've always wanted to see that! _side.

And maybe she didn't want her logical side. Maybe she didn't want to be free of this fantastical dreamland...Literally a dreamland! Maybe she wanted to just sleep in the comfortable chaos of her thoughts.

But...

The round face of the boy called "Neville" flashed into her mind and then before her eyes, just for a moment.

She still had a life to live. She believed this wholeheartedly, in a wordless surge of Certainty that was only wordless because the noise in her head was tearing away her words. _Out! _she managed. _Out! Out! Out!_

...

**OUT.**

The word gave the Doctor pause as he attempted to make his way through the twisting countryside of Luna Lovegood's mind. It shook at his surroundings, seeming to search for something to latch onto so that it could remain coherent.

**OUT.**

It was trying to evict him.

Well, Luna wasn't, but the Great Intelligence was, and it was using her for it.

It was working. The Doctor could feel himself being ripped away, like magic; being slowly sent off. He'd find himself actually inside his TARDIS in alternating moments. Her magic was strong. Very strong.

"Luna!" the Doctor shouted into the sky. "Luna, you have to listen to me! This is the Doctor speaking! Mr. The Doctor! You _can_ hear me, and I know that because this is _your_ mind! Focus on my voice!"

**OUT.**

"No, not _me _out; him out! You're sending me away, and without me, you're alone with him! Help me to save you, Lovegood. You've got to find him in your mind first; your personal mind, not this physical place. You can do that, and I know you can, because it's in your blood. You are part witch, but you're also part something else; something that can do the impossible."

The earthquake lessened.

"So how about it, Impossible Luna?" the Doctor said. "Are you the master of your mind?" He lifted the wand he'd received. "This isn't yours yet, but it will be. You're the only one here who can use it, Luna. Find your way to it. Concentrate."

"Mr. The Doctor?" a faint voice said.

"Yes?" the Doctor implored of the sky.

Then, Luna walked up, but not nine-year-old, black funeral dress Luna. This Luna wore a neon skirt, colorful leggings, a Quibbler t-shirt, and radish earrings. This Luna had to be at least fifteen.

"Mr. The Doctor," Older Luna began in her same dreamy voice, "I do think that this Great Intelligence may deserve a bit of a run." She took her wand from him.

Eleven gawked and smiled. Finally, something was going his way.


	7. Chapter 7

Young Luna was beginning to grow content with her daydreams (the most dangerous thing to grow: content) when a lone figure began to make its way toward her. This figure would not have been noticeable had it not seemed to radiate light and order.

Upon further inspection, Luna recognized the figure as a rabbit. A bouncing bunny-rabbit made of light. It drifted closer and started nuzzling against her face; strange, because it actually seemed to have substance, warmth...

And it actually drew her undivided focus.

She ran her hand down the length of its body, and it suddenly dissolved, all of the light absorbing into her.

And the distractions fell away, enough for her to see where she really was: in a swamp that was full of nargles. And if she listened closely...were those wrackspurts? Speaking words of the past and promises of the future...And question words, asking _Where is Harry Potter? Does your father know where he is? What has he said to you of the Dark Lord?_

Luna started to move closer to the voices, struggling to make out what they were saying, when a hand pulled her up short. She whipped around to see...the Older Luna from the illusion, except less injured-looking and brighter-eyed.

Luna-of-the-Future shook her head. "Spoilers," she warned with her gleaming eyes. "In all your adventures with Mr. The Doctor, that's the one thing you'll learn: no spoilers." She appeared to think it over. "But also loads of fun and not nearly enough pudding. And you'll want to keep a journal."

Luna of the Not-Future pondered what was the most important question to address just now. She went with the immediate problem: "The Great Intelligence. How do I defeat it?"

"It's like Mr. The Doctor said," Older Luna answered. "You're master of your own mind, more so than most. Some might argue even more so than Hermione Granger."

"Who?"

"Just a friend. A particularly unimaginative one...but a friend." Luna of the Future seemed so at peace, Young Luna couldn't help but compare her to the injured, haunted Future Luna from the images. She wondered if this Luna came from before or after, but she decided not to ask because that, too, would be spoilers. Time travel was terribly mysterious. "What I mean," Future Luna continued, "is that our mentality is not bound by or confined to the realm of logic. We're able to expand past that. Our mind is like rubber; it's flexible and resilient. It's because of that that Mr. The Great Intelligence is having trouble keeping his purchase on it. Our mind bends and refuses to be confined, so he has to conform to its logic. Our logic. And we have power over that."

"Was that your Patronus?" Young Luna asked suddenly. "The rabbit?"

Older Luna beamed. "Saving my past self with my own Patronus; that's a lesson I learned from Harry Potter."

"Harry Potter?"

"Another friend."

"Really?"

"Don't seek him out at Hogwarts," Older Luna instructed. "In your time, you'll run into each other. And he'll need your help a few times."

Young Luna reached out to touch one of the radishes dangling from her older counterpart's ear. "Did you make these earrings?" she asked, awed. "I want a pair! They must be brilliant at-"

"Sorry!" called a voice as Mr. The Doctor stumbled into view. "Have we forgotten about the dark force that's thriving?" He planted his fists on his hips bossily.

"Intelligence isn't inherently dark or light," Young Luna said automatically. "But it _is_ inherently limited."

"Pardon me, but I've encountered the Great Intelligence enough; I think I'd _know_...Oh!" Mr. The Doctor paused, seeming to realize something. "Oh, you're being clever over there, aren't you?"

"Do it," Older Luna said to Younger Luna with a grin that seemed like it could devour whole universes. "You know what to do. Go on!" Then Older Luna turned into a glowing rabbit, exactly like the Patronus, and hopped through the air, eating away the nargles.

"What are you thinking?" Mr. The Doctor asked the one remaining Luna, looking as though his Christmas had come early.

"A lot of things," Luna answered with a smile. "And they're all mad."

Then the world exploded.


	8. Chapter 8

Luna woke up in her bedroom at home, which was a situation that she instantly did not trust. She checked under the bed and in the cabinets and everywhere that she could think of to find a sign of the Great Intelligence's trickery. Then, she checked her mind. The lurking shadow that had been present for such a while, now, seemed to have gone. She felt..._healthy._

"Luna!" a voice called out. "Luna, darling? Are you awake?"

Luna descended the staircase to find her father, Xenophilius Lovegood, pouring three cups of tea. One was set aside for her, one for her father, and the third...

"Mr. The Doctor? What's happened?"

The stringy man was gleefully (and most ungracefully) sipping from his own cup, but stopped abruptly once he saw Luna. "Alright, there, Luna?" he asked loudly. "I was a bit worried for a moment. You took quite a _fall_ on that _hillside." _The way he emphasized his words emphatically and winked after speaking made for what had to be the least subtle lie Luna Lovegood had ever heard, but she went along with it.

"I suspect it was wrackspurts," she said sagely. "I've been out of sorts all day."

"Well, at least Mr. The Doctor was there to carry you back," Mr. Lovegood answered brightly. "But you should be more careful, darling. I have taught you how to get rid of wrackspurts. You just have to be quick enough."

Luna nodded absently while drinking her tea. She couldn't imagine how Mr. The Doctor had managed to put her father in such a good mood, but there it was, and she was grateful for it.

She never got to ask for an explanation that day as to what happened in her mind; the time lord left just as swiftly as he'd arrived.

...

The second time Luna Lovegood saw Mr. The Doctor, she was eleven.


	9. Chapter 9

Luna Lovegood's compartment on the journey to Hogwarts was usually unoccupied, apart, of course, from Luna herself. Even on the trip First Year, the voyage was made in solitude after two girls spent five minutes sitting across from her, exchanged a pregnant look, and departed. Luna did not mind; she merely smoothed out her skirt over her colorful leggings and watched the countryside drag along. It was all very beautiful. She was even certain that she saw a pale blue car wobbling through the sky...

_Whoosh! Whoosh!_

Luna turned her head slowly and found that the compartment was now furnished with a large, blue box.

"Hullo!" a man yelled as he sprang from the box, teetering on his feet as though making sure his thoughts wouldn't slide out of his ears.

"Hmm," Luna sighed. "You've changed your bowtie this go. How was it that we left my mind, Mr. The Doctor?"

Without answering, the strange cartoony man gazed around the compartment, then looked thrilled. "Don't tell me...Is this the Hogwarts Express?"

"Why would you ask a question after telling me not to answer it?"

"Oh!" The Doctor's grin broadened. "You are clever! Still mad as ever. Brilliant."

Luna stood and proceeded to stroke the TARDIS's side.

"She's been missing you," the Doctor said, and Luna was unsure whether he was talking to her or the TARDIS. "Now! Off to Hogwarts! Or..._from_ Hogwarts. Is it to or from?"

"To."

"And what year is this? For you, I mean."

"It's my first year," she answered.

"Oh! Oh. Chamber of Secrets. This is going to be interesting." His nose wrinkled a bit.

Luna was briefly confused, but then remembered that Mr. The Doctor had, of course, seen the future. "The Chamber of Secrets?" Luna's gaze brightened. "So I was right; It's real!"

"You're looking a bit cheerful, to be finding out that every Muggle-born in the school is in grave danger."

"I never knew whether the Chamber was real," she answered, unabashed.

"You weren't sure? _You?_ I thought you believed every story."

"Not every story is true," Luna said.

"You're one to talk," the Doctor muttered, then suddenly shouted: "So! Has the trolley come by yet?" He plopped onto the seat, and she followed.

"Not yet," she answered.

"And you. Why're you sitting all alone?" His voice has lowered, and he suddenly seemed concerned for her.

"There were two other girls, but they chose to leave. I think they found my presence disconcerting. Do you know I saw a flying car moments ago?"

"Was it pale blue?" the Doctor asked gleefully.

"Yes," Luna replied. "How did you know?"

"No reason. Oh! So you've got your own wand, now, haven't you?"

Luna nodded, drawing the long, slender object from a skirt pocket. "My father gave it to me yesterday," she said breathily. "It's quite lovely."

"Yes, it is."

"You never answered. How did we leave my mind?"

"You, of course. You stopped trying to instill order. In the chaos that followed, the strongest force present would be the one that controlled our fates." He looked at her expectantly.

"You don't mean that force was me," Luna said knowingly.

"Of course not. That force was the TARDIS. Whipped us out in a jiffy; I took you right along home."

Luna stood to touch the TARDIS again. "Thank you," she whispered.

The train stopped, suddenly.

"Ooooooh!" The Doctor rubbed his hands together. "This is going to be brilliant! Hogwarts castle! The Sorting! Albus Dumbledore! Oh, and Gilderoy Lockhart will be there."

"Father told me that Gilderoy Lockhart doesn't know anything," Luna said, as though the memory has just floated to mind.

"And what do you think?"

"I don't believe I've ever met someone who didn't know anything before."

The Doctor grinned. "I've got to go, but I'll be back."

"Where are you going?"

"There's a tree that I want to see."

"A tree?"

"Yes. A brilliant, fantastic tree." He spun her around, then vanished into the TARDIS, which then vanished entirely. Luna was left alone.

She shook her head and started humming to herself. She continued the song until she had reached the doors of Hogwarts. But once there, she had a peculiar feeling that someone was watching her, somewhere near the corner where the winged statues loomed.

Luna blinked.


	10. Chapter 10

Since the hall was empty, but for her (She had fallen behind.), Luna was the only one to see that the statue suddenly halved the distance betwixt them.

Curious, Luna drew closer to it. "Exceptional," she said, moving her upcoming Sorting to a side-tab in her mind. "I wonder...Are you alive?" she asked the statue. "Could you show me whether you're alive? Could you tell me?" She waited a while in silence, but no sound, no movement, greeted her.

Momentarily uncertain (for, she could still be late for Sorting), Luna took a few steps back and glanced behind her at the desertedness. When she glanced back, the statue was millimeters away from touching her. She gasped and retreated a few more steps, keeping the statue firmly planted in sight. She had gained about two meters when she heard a fluttering sound just behind her and felt a whisper at the back of her neck.

She had just whipped around to see a second statue on the other side of her when she felt stone press against her, and her surroundings vanished.

She was in a gray room with a cupboard and a bed and a boy.

"How'd you get in here?" the boy demanded, sounding a peculiar mix of angry that she was trespassing, stunned that she'd appeared so suddenly, and hungry for answers. "How did you do that? That wasn't..." He broke off, then seemed to decide not to finish his sentence.

Luna gazed about her. "You have a lovely bedroom," she said.

The boy scowled. "It's not mine. It belongs to the orphanage."

Seeing the problem, Luna looked for something to compliment on the boy. "You've a lovely nose, then. That's yours."

The boy raised his eyebrows, but looked a bit pleased. "You're mad."

"I'm Luna. What's your name?"

The boy scowled again. "Tom Riddle."

"Riddle? That's pretty. I do love riddles."

"It's a common name," Tom said spitefully, not accepting the compliment.

"Is there something else I ought to call you?" Luna asked.

Tom paused, then shook his head.

"Well then. Could you tell me where I am, Tom?"

"I told you: the orphanage."

"Yes, only I think I've been transported," Luna said patiently. "And I'm not certain how far. I fear I may miss my Sorting."

"Sorting?"

Before Luna could say any more, and before Tom could ask any more, a swishing sound filled the room, and once again Mr. The Doctor tumbled out of the TARDIS. "Got your message! Came as soon as I could, which was pret-ty soon," he said brightly.

"What message?" Luna asked.

"You mean you didn't leave one?" the Doctor screwed his face up a bit. "Bother. Remember to do that later. Oi! Who's this?" He donned a great big smile as he noticed the room's other occupant.

"How'd you get in here?" Tom demanded again, more angrily, now. "Tell me how you do that!"

"This is Tom," Luna said. "Tom Riddle."

The Doctor's face fell. "Tom Riddle?" His expression grew cloudly. "Ohhhhh...We have got to go."

"No!" Tom shouted, taking a threatening step toward the Doctor. "You can leave, but don't take her! She's my friend!"

Luna was admittedly surprised to hear this, but she smiled all the same. "I'll come back," she told him.

"No!" the Doctor protested.

"Why not?" Tom demanded.

The Doctor smacked himself in the forehead. "Oi! You're to be Sorted soon, Lovegood. Let's bugger off. Wouldn't want to bother young...er...Tom." As the Doctor led her into the TARDIS, Luna called out, "See you, Riddle!" before the door closed.

Luna hadn't been inside the TARDIS in a while, but it was still familiar and warm. Mr. The Doctor was hunched over the controls, seeming to deliberately shut her out. Luna simply drew nearer to him and waited for him words to come pouring out.

Eventually, they did: "He's dangerous, understand? I know he seems like he's just a boy right now, but he's dangerous."

"He doesn't seem like just a boy," Luna disagreed. "I think he wanted to hurt you just now. And he doesn't like being common. He needs to be different. Is he Voldemort?"

"What?" The Doctor was shocked at her deduction.

"Is he? Is he Voldemort young? Did that statue send me to the past?"

"Statue?" the Doctor repeated, alarmed.

"I want to see him again."

"The statue?"

"The boy."

"Why, when you know that he's Voldemort?"

"Maybe there's a chance," she answered vaguely. "Shouldn't someone give him a chance?"

"He got a chance. He got sent to Hogwarts. He made Horcruxes and killed a bunch of people. Chances over."

"Horcruxes?"

"Spoilers. But no. The idea that Lord Voldemort is anything but evil is a lie from the depths of Tumblr."

"He hasn't got magic yet," Luna pointed out. "And I have. I'd be safe to at least try to make him-"

"You are naïve," the Doctor said harshly.

"No," Luna disagreed with dignified resign. "I'm mad."

The Doctor was quiet for a long time. Then, at last, he broke into a grin. "Alright. Fine. We're fixing Voldemort. But first, we're going to hurry up and Sort you into Ravenclaw.'

"Spoilers!" Luna protested indignantly.

The Doctor zipped his lips and shoved her out of the TARDIS.


	11. Chapter 11

It wasn't until after her first week of Hogwarts that Luna waited by the Black Lake for the Doctor to pick her up. She was barefoot, trailing her toes in the water and feeling serene. She didn't even shift her position when she heard the TARDIS noise behind her.

"Come along then, Lovegood," the Doctor said.

Luna stood. "Have you ever seen a thestral?" she asked distantly.

"No, but I do a lot of reading," the Doctor said with a cryptic smile. "Sorry I'm late; I was dealing with an infestation of sorts."

"What sort of infestation?" Luna asked, passing him to enter the TARDIS.

"Statues," the Doctor replied darkly.

"Angel statues?"

"Yes."

"I wondered where those went. Nobody else seemed to notice."

"Yes, well, you're different than everybody else."

"I know," Luna said calmly, although something must have seemed odd in her voice, because suddenly Mr. the Doctor was noticing her bare feet.

His face grew serious. "Your shoes. Were they stolen?"

"That's a possibility," Luna answered, more curious about the Doctor's concern than the state of her shoes. "I do think I left them on the night stand, so as to be safe from anything that might crawl under the bed...They seem to have wandered off, though."

"'Under the bed'?" the Doctor repeated.

"Mr. the Doctor, you're stalling," Luna said. "I want to see Tom."

The Doctor sighed and rolled his eyes. "Alright, Lovegood. Let's be off, then." He strode about the controls, flicked dramatically at some switches, and sent the TARDIS swirling through non-matter.

When they slammed to a stop, Luna skipped merrily to the door.

"Wait!" the Doctor called, jogging after her.

She did, serenely upturning her face to look at him.

"A few ground rules," the Doctor said. "First: If I think he's going to turn dangerous, we leave."

"Of course," Luna said, smiling distantly.

"Second: Do not leave your wand unattended around him. In fact, avoid showing him your wand at all."

"All right." Luna nodded.

"Now, I'm not exactly sure where we are in his timeline, so give him no spoilers. Nothing about Hogwarts, nothing about Death Eaters."

"Even if telling him could save him?" Luna said gravely.

The Doctor stared down into Lovegood's face. "You truly do plan to save Voldemort's soul, do you? You care that much?"

Luna frowned a bit. "It must hurt him, to be so dark, mustn't it? I think about it a lot. More, now, since I've met him. It must hurt him an awful lot. And saving him could save other people, too: the Longbottoms, the Prewetts, the Potters..."

"Your mother?" the Doctor guessed.

Luna shook her head. "My mother died after the fall of Voldemort. She was experimenting..."

"Right," the Doctor said hastily. "I forgot."

Luna knew that she hadn't told him this story before, but she was also aware that he was a time traveler and could have heard it from a future version of herself. But then...if she was telling him now, she wouldn't likely tell him in the future, would she?

Before she could think more on it, the Doctor's countenance brightened, and he threw open the TARDIS door. "Hello, Tom!" he exclaimed, entering the room beyond and beginning to bounce up and down on Tom Riddle's bed.

Riddle himself was sitting at his window, staring at the TARDIS. When Luna stepped out, the boy's expression turned greedy. "You're back," he observed with a grin.

Luna was pleased, if a bit uneasy, to have been missed by Young Voldemort. "How long has it been for you?"

"Since yesterday," Tom answered. "Why? Is time different where you're from?"

"It's been a week for us," Luna answered.

Tom peered at her, calculating. "Can you send him away?" he asked, nodding at the Doctor. "So we can talk alone?"

"Absolutely not," the Doctor said before Luna could even open her mouth all the way.

"She can speak for herself," Tom retorted sharply, not taking his dark eyes off of Luna. "She's clever."

Luna was aware that this had to be flattery, seeing as she had barely spoken to Tom, let alone said anything clever to him. Unless...Unless this wasn't only his second time seeing her. With time travel, who could tell?

"Careful, Tom," the Doctor said quietly, "or I'll set your wardrobe on fire. Then what'll happen to all the things you've stolen?"

"How do you know that?" Tom demanded, his face contorting with rage. Some glass ornament on his desk shattered.

Luna, sensing danger, did the first thing that came to mind: she hugged him. It was a way to repel various breeds of heart-parasites, though not a very safe one. Riddle tensed in her hold, but seemed pleased with the attention.

"Can you make him go away?" Tom asked again, and Luna detected a particularly manipulative softness to his tone, now.

Luna backed away from Tom but glanced at the Doctor.

"No!" the time lord shouted preemptively. "No! And you know why not, as well, Lovegood!"

"Mr. the Doctor, with all you know about Tom, do you think that he would hurt me?" Luna asked calmly, hoping that the man would pick up on her psychological maneuvering.

The Doctor stared into Luna's eyes for a few seconds, as though he knew what she was doing but didn't like it in the slightest. At last, though, he said, "I suppose not. But I will be back. Soon." He shut himself in the TARDIS, but the box did not vanish.

"He cares quite a lot," Luna said, by way of explanation.

"I don't like doctors," Tom said, his eyes narrowed very slightly but his voice steady. Luna noted that he was a bit taller than her, even though he obviously wasn't quite Hogwarts age yet. This wasn't remarkable, for Luna was rather small, but it did make him seem a bit more intimidating. Perhaps it would help, she decided, if he didn't see her as much of a threat. "You haven't told me how you do the things that you do," Tom added.

"You mean you don't know? You do it as well," Luna said, setting herself down on the edge of his bed.

"I thought I was the only one," Tom answered, averting his eyes. Even so, Luna could feel the resentment radiating from him, and she almost shivered.

Luna rose from Tom's bed to sit, instead, on his windowsill. She noted that the windowsill wasn't dusty, which must have meant that he opened and closed his window quite a bit. "It's magic," she told him simply. "And that's all I can tell you."

"Why?" Tom demanded, drawing rather close, although from this seat she looked down at him.

To rectify this unforeseen error, Luna dropped to the floor again and remained standing. "Because you find out soon enough anyway. Quite soon, in fact."

Tom looked dissatisfied but said nothing. He only stared.

A thought occurred to Luna. "Dear me!" she cried suddenly. "You've got a soulwig!"

"A what?" Tom asked, slightly alarmed.

Luna placed her hands gently on his shoulders. "A soulwig. It's a parasite that can latch onto your soul and chop it up into pieces. It can't be removed because it stops you from telling anyone that you're hurting until you're too hurt to want it gone."

Tom gazed at Luna, uncertain. "That doesn't sound real."

"It's one of the more abstract of magical creatures," Luna said breathily. "Most deny that it exists. But I believe. I think you have one." Tears started to form in her eyes, and she hugged the boy again.

This time, he shoved her off, displeased. "Stop that! There's nothing wrong with me!"

He had been a bit rough, and Luna's hip hit the corner of his desk. That would bruise. "It's fine if you don't believe me, though," she said quietly, almost to herself. "Most people don't." Somehow, she seemed to have forgotten that she was in the room with Voldemort, and was instead entranced by the less relevant aspects of the situation: How fascinating it was that she was doomed to never be believed and Riddle was doomed to never be fixed. This whole concept of saving him was doomed from the start, and here she stood, barefoot in an orphan's bedroom about forty years before her birth... "That's a pretty rock," she mused, picking up a stone from the top of Riddle's desk and turning it over in her fingers.

She did not notice that Riddle was staring at her again, with the same greedy look as before. His gaze took in the way her head angled and how she stood with her legs crossed, her toes fluttering listlessly against the floor, and how the lazy light of the late sun had her faintly outlined before him, and it didn't occur to him that her first appearance in his room could have been an accident of any sort. Because she was his new secret friend. His very own.

Then she set the rock down, gently, as though trying to avoid waking it, and her eyes met his. "Have you ever hurt anybody, Tom?" she asked curiously.

He grinned a bit at the question, which was not encouraging. "I can make bad things happen," he said confidentially, "to people who were mean to me. I can make people hurt, if I want."

Luna took this response in stride, but then he continued:

"Can you do that?"

"I've never tried," she said calmly. "I think it hurts people more to know that they'd deserve it if they were hurt than it does to hurt them." Perhaps this wasn't the most ethical concept to circulate, but it was how she felt. "I think that people who should be hurt are already hurting more than they hurt others."

Tom neither followed her logic, nor agreed with it, but he decided against calling her mad. "You will visit me more, won't you?"

"Yes," Luna answered. "If you'd like."

"I would," Tom said. "But don't leave yet." For a very brief moment, he eyed the blue box that now occupied the corner of his room as though he'd like to set _it_ on fire, for threatening to end Luna's visit.

"I won't," Luna replied.

"I want to see your magic," Tom said with relish.

"You've already seen it."

"I want to see it again. Does it come out of your hands, or do you do it with your mind?"

At that moment, the Doctor popped out of the TARDIS door. "Time to be off, Lovegood!"

"I'll be back soon! I promise!" Luna said to Tom before he could protest. The glare he was levelling on the Doctor was nothing short of dark.


	12. Chapter 12

"One more," Luna said immediately after the door was shut. "While we have the time. Let's see him again, at least once."

"Did he hurt you?" the Doctor asked.

"The desk did, a bit," Luna replied. "Just here..." She pointed to her hip.

"One more Riddle visit," the Doctor sighed, simply frolicking with nervous energy. "For today. And I'm simply stunned that you weren't made a Gryffindor."

"I'm not brave," Luna said. "Not really. Although I suppose what I'm doing wouldn't be counted terribly clever..."

"Clever. Perhaps not. But you chose the peaceful way. Instead of killing him while he's powerless, you want to reform him."

"Killing him while he's powerless seems a Slytherin's path, doesn't it?"

"You'd be surprised. Slytherins and Gryffindors aren't so different, when all's said and done." The Doctor looked sad and wistful and farther away than normal. "Bravery can make one ambitious, and ambition can make one brave."

Luna tilted her head. "But cleverness can do the same."

The Doctor grinned. "I like you." He sprinted to the TARDIS console.

While he worked, Luna wandered down the TARDIS hallway until she found herself in front of a familiar door. She opened it to find the TARDIS's labyrinthine library. Led by what she could only assume was the TARDIS's willpower, Luna followed an intangible path and found herself in front of a shelf housing many brightly-colored books.

One specific book cover caught her eye, and though she couldn't quite make out the title, she reached for the book.

A hand yanked her round, and she was face-to-rabbity-face with the Doctor, who looked alarmed. "Lovegood! What are you doing here? What have I told you about wandering off?"

"Have you told me something about wandering off?" Luna asked interestedly. "I don't remember that."

"Hasn't anybody ever told you not to read books from a time traveller's library?" the Doctor looked exasperated.

For once, a look of penitence fell across Luna's features. "Yes. I'm sorry."

The Doctor was a bit startled by this turn of events, but he plowed on, "Right. Well, see that it doesn't happen again." As he steered her out of the library, he let out an imperceptible sigh of relief that he had stopped her before she managed to grab hold of the fifth Harry Potter book. He couldn't imagine why she would be led to that specific shelf.

They arrived at the TARDIS's exit, and he turned to give Luna her usual briefing. "Alright. We're farther along in Tom's timeline, now, but it is possible that we've crisscrossed ourselves and he's seen us more than we've seen him. Try not to volunteer new information until you've gaged how much he knows."

Luna nodded. "Alright."

The Doctor threw the door open with a flourish and sauntered out into the same bedroom to see a lean young man sitting atop his desk, facing them. The Doctor staggered back, but Luna continued, awestruck, to enter the room. Tom was older by many years, now, and very, very handsome. There was a charming upturn to his lips but the same intensity in his eyes, just better-masked. He looked amused when he saw Luna and dropped down to the floor.

"Lovegood!" he acknowledged, clearly pleased. "You're here. And you're so _young_. When's the last time you saw me?"

Luna passed the Doctor, who still stood tense and unmoving. "We just came from your childhood," she said cautiously. "Before Hogwarts. How old are you now?"

"Sixteen," Tom said lazily. "And I've seen you loads more times, now. Your aim could improve, Doctor." His dark eyes landed on the Doctor, then, with condescension but no noticeable hatred. Like a cat pinning down a small animal or insect. The corner of his mouth rose a bit. "You drive like a madman."

The Doctor finally stirred, raising his chin to better look down at Tom in wariness. "I _am_ a madman. Did you say you're sixteen?"

Tom nodded, gazing at the Doctor as though trying to unweave the riddles that composed him. "And you always seem to know so much." With that cryptic remark, he waved a dismissive hand. "I presume you know the drill, now, Doctor. You can go."

The Doctor looked much more reluctant this go. "Think I'll stay, if that's alright."

"What? You think I'll hex her? You don't know me yet, the way I know you, but you ought to know that I won't do that."

"Leave me your wand, then," the Doctor said without missing a beat.

Tom's eyes narrowed, but he pulled his wand out with a hand of slender fingers and set it on the floor for the Doctor to pick up. The Doctor took it and disappeared into the TARDIS. And this time, the TARDIS did leave.

"Sit," said Tom, gesturing at the bed and beginning to pace the room.

"Is it...after your sixth year, or before?" Luna asked, seating herself where he had indicated.

"After," Tom said absentmindedly. He seemed to be deciding something. "What's that first thing you said that I have?" he asked, a bit of amusement touching his voice again. "The first of your strange creatures that I ever heard of?"

"A soulwig," Luna said. "You didn't like it very much."

"A soulwig," Tom repeated. "And that's supposed to...prevent me from confiding in people?"

"Yes," Luna confirmed, frowning a bit and wondering if he was about to make fun of her.

"I'm about to confide in you." Tom pulled his desk chair so that he was able to sit across from her. His eyes were so intense, simply daring her to judge him.

"Alright," Luna said, unfazed. Quite the contrary: she met his gaze with intrigue.

"I killed someone this year," he said. "A Mudblood. Are you upset with me?"

Every word in that sentence slammed into Luna's mind with nothing to soften the blows. _So I fail, then, _she thought. _I'm going to see Tom Riddle throughout his life, and I'm going to try to make him better, and I'm going to fail. _Her eyes started to burn, and she looked past Tom, at his desk, and she wondered where the pretty rock had gone.

"Why did you kill the person?" the Ravenclaw in her asked.

"I opened the Chamber of Secrets," Tom said slowly. "I set a Basilisk on her."

"I didn't ask 'how'," Luna pointed out thinly. "I asked 'why'." A tear spilled over, and Tom caught it with a finger.

"Have I disappointed you, Lovegood?" he asked.

Luna shook her head. "You've grown to be yourself," Luna said. "It's me I'm disappointed in."

"Because you went back in time to _fix_ me," he said, with just a trace of venom in his assessment, as he caught another tear.

So he would find out. Maybe that was why it wouldn't work.

Luna looked at his blurry form. "I'm not a mechanic," she said, still sounding so clear even though she was crying. "Or a doctor."

Tom laughed a bit. "If it's any compensation," he said, "you have changed something: you've made it so I'm not alone."

_I'm about to confide in you. _That was what he had said. If she couldn't fix Voldemort, there were things that she could do. She could try to decrease the damage. "You can confide in me," she said aloud.

Tom's response was cut short by the TARDIS reappearing.

"I forgot how short our meetings were back then," he said with a wry smile.

"I'll see you," Luna said.

"I know," Tom replied almost cockily.

Luna rose to leave, but Tom caught hold of her wrist before she was within reach of the TARDIS. "Take this," he said, handing her a bundle of paper. "Write in it if you ever need me."

_Need you? _Luna thought, having honestly not considered that their relationship might go two ways. "Thanks, Tom," she said uncertainly.

Tom nodded. "If you have it, I should be able to protect you. Keep it with you."

Luna nodded.

"And send the Doctor out with my wand," Tom added, sounding more irritated.

...

"He said that?" the Doctor said, stunned.

"Yes," Luna replied calmly.

"Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort, the bloke who sees interpersonal connections as a weakness, that bloke, said 'you made it so I'm not alone'?"

"Yes," Luna said again.

The Doctor rubbed the palm of his right hand against his forehead. "Either he's tricking you, which I wouldn't doubt for a second- sorry, Lovegood -or you've managed to change something in him."

"That was the hope, wasn't it?" Luna had the package that Tom had given her sitting on her lap, and she was surprised that the Doctor didn't seem to notice it.

The Doctor sighed. "I tried some tinkering with Voldemort's wand...even brought in Olivander. Not sure if it did anything, though. I wanted to make it so it didn't hurt people, but apparently it '_doesn't work that way_'."

Serious though the topic was, Luna couldn't help but find the Doctor's juvenile mimic of the old, renowned wand-maker rather funny.

"We're here, by the way," the Doctor said glumly. "See you again next weekend."

Luna waved as she exited the TARDIS with her package.

Her walk to the Ravenclaw common room was fairly serene, and the riddle she was asked in order to get in wasn't terribly hard ("What occurs once in a minute, twice in a moment, and never in a thousand years?" "The letter M"). She passed a clump of boys studying and two girls playing chess and curtsied to the statue of Rowena Ravenclaw, just to be polite, before at last she reached the girls' dormitory.

Sitting in her bed and drawing the curtains, she unwrapped the package that Tom had given her.

As predicted, it was a book. A little black diary.


	13. Chapter 13

Mr. the Doctor did not return until after Halloween.

He landed on the Hogwarts grounds, in the area that Luna tended to occupy, one early morning and spilled out onto the grass, along with some smoke. "Sorry!" he coughed. "Bit of an error with the console. I just came back from an adventure with a giant capybara...Anyway, happy Saturday, Lovegood!"

"It's Friday," Luna answered serenely, putting aside some weeds that she had been braiding together.

"Right, so I'm a bit early..."

"It's after Halloween, but it's no trouble." Luna stood. "It's still my first year."

"After Halloween...So, anything strange happen to Filch's cat?"

"Not that I know of. And I do like to make it my business to know about the castle's animal guardian population, so I'd say Mrs. Norris has been rather ordinary. Ronald Weasley's rat is very strange, though. I don't think he's really a rat at all."

The Doctor reeled from this information. "Mrs. Norris is fine?"

"She hasn't been limping, and she still likes being scratched behind the neck. I don't think anybody's kicked her or anything. Why do you ask?"

The Doctor blinked. "Have you met Ginny Weasley?"

"Of course. She's very nice, but she is very shy, too. She's why I know who Ronald Weasley is. And the rat."

"Enough on the rat," the Doctor said a bit firmly. "Has Ginny seemed...strange, recently?"

"No," Luna said, frowning a bit. "We live near each other, and I don't think she acts much differently than she normally does. She does get easily embarrassed around Harry Potter, though."

"Nothing else?" the Doctor insisted.

Luna shook her head.

"Something's changed, then," the Doctor said, pacing.

"Positively?" Luna asked.

"It seems so, but I'm not sure yet." The Doctor turned and wordlessly entered the TARDIS, leaving the door open for Luna to follow him.

"Are we going to see Tom?" Luna asked him, touching her pocket, where the diary still sat. She hadn't written in it, hadn't done anything but flipped through the blank pages and occasionally touched the place where it sat, as she was doing now. It felt curiously like it might burn her if she held it for too long.

"Yes. I think so." Something in the Doctor's tone made Luna feel like she was on the outside of some great secret. The feeling wasn't unpleasant, though. The Doctor always seemed to know things that she didn't. He was like Dumbledore, only older and with even more power.

Luna sat down, cross-legged, as she had in the past, and waited.

The TARDIS's almost-soothing jerky movements stilled, and the Doctor crouched in front of Luna. "There was a deleted timeline," he said at last, "where the Chamber of Secrets was opened on the Halloween that just passed. Something's changed in your timeline, and I think that it has to do with your meetings with Tom Riddle."

Luna felt herself hoping and wondered if it would be smart to put a stop to it, but she decided that it was better to feel violently than to prevent herself from feeling at all. So she hoped.

"I don't know how," the Doctor said gravely, "but this timeline has been altered so that he opens the Chamber once and either doesn't open it again or waits much longer." His gaze shifted. "Still barefoot, Lovegood?"

"I suspect nargles," Luna said without conviction. Nargles were most active in the springtime, and anyway, Hogwarts should be warded against such creatures. But there was still a chance that it was them stealing her shoes.

"Let's see Tom," the Doctor said with a strange gentleness.

They stepped out of the TARDIS.

Tom, young and glaring, stood waiting for them at the door. "Why didn't you tell me there was a wizard school?" he demanded.

"How long has it been?" Luna asked.

"Lovegood, stand back," the Doctor ordered almost at the same time. He had taken a defensive stance in front of her, nearly bumping her back into the TARDIS. He held his sonic screwdriver like a wizard might hold a wand, which was curious.

"It's been a month since you said you'd be back," Tom said accusingly. "In that time, a man called Dumbledore came to tell me I'm a wizard. And he set my wardrobe on fire." He glared from the Doctor to Luna, and somehow he managed to make each glare different. His glare for the Doctor was one of distrust, whereas his glare for Luna looked more like a parent who was disappointed in his child. "So. Are you wizards, as well? Why did you see me early?"

At the same time, Luna and the Doctor came to the decision to never tell Tom Riddle that they had met him by accident.

"Lovegood's a witch," the Doctor said. "I'm a time traveller. She couldn't come to see you without my help. _This box_ is my time machine. And we came to see you because the future required us to. There's a timeline in which good and evil come into conflict, and good wins, but the cost is many lives. Lives that we'd like to save. Including yours."

"I die, in the future?"

"Everyone dies eventually, Tom."

Tom scowled.

"It's like sleep, after a long day," the Doctor continued.

"And you'd know?" Tom challenged.

"Oh, sure. I've died loads of times," the Doctor said with his usual playful grin. "Anyway, we've already changed that timeline a bit, but the goal is to change it completely."

Tom turned his head slightly. "And that box of yours. It's bigger on the inside. That's magic as well?"

"More like a pocket universe, but sure, if it helps."

"You can go, now," Tom said stiffly. "I want to speak to Luna."

The Doctor's smile fell. "Sure. I'll be here, then, Lovegood." As he had before, he slipped into the TARDIS but kept it parked.

"Let me see your wand," Tom ordered.

"You'll get your own before school," Luna said.

"I want to see yours."

Cautiously, Luna took out her wand. The familiar greedy look entered Tom's eyes, and she put the wand back hastily. "It has unicorn hair. I was pleased."

"And you're from my future. That means, really, I'm older."

Luna nodded.

"How do I die?"

"I can't tell you that," Luna replied. "Spoilers. It's against the rules."

"Why not?"

"The Doctor says that if I tell you, it becomes fixed and we won't be able to change it."

"But he already fixed it so I die?"

"Everybody dies. You'd have eventually died anyway."

"Not with magic. I'm going to get a lot of magic, and I'm not going to die." For the first time, something in Tom's eyes legitimately scared her. It wasn't a self-preservation fear, though.

"Living forever would get awfully boring," Luna pointed out pensively. Her hands instinctively found the pretty rock on his desk.

"I'd keep you alive, as well," Tom said dismissively.

Luna frowned, finding this comment, and the _of course I would _tone of his voice oddly thoughtful, in its way. And perhaps a bit comforting, again, in its way. "Are you sad here?" she asked him, rather off-topic. "You seem so unhappy."

When Tom simply stared at her and didn't answer, Luna took the tiara of weeds that she had been weaving and placed it on his head.

"There," she said, satisfied. "It'll keep the bad thoughts away."

"Is there a spell on it?" Tom asked, standing still, as if he thought bees might attack him if he moved.

"No," Luna answered simply.

"They'll think I'm mad if I turn up at dinner wearing this." Still, he didn't take it off.

Suddenly, the TARDIS began to vanish.

"I wonder where he's going," Luna said. "Maybe he forgot we were here..."

Tom, to say the least, did not look sorry about this turn of events. "Want to go somewhere?" he asked eagerly.

"Are you allowed?" Luna asked.

"Sure." It was an obvious lie, but Luna decided she didn't mind.

With the slightest movement of her hand to confirm that her wand was still in place, Luna nodded. "Sure."

...

Tom seemed surprised that Luna, smaller though she was, was able to keep pace with his sprinting. They had exited his room through the window, and now they dashed over hills and across roads, up to a strange, dark cave.

_It looks like a place where people are murdered, _Luna thought curiously. _It even smells a bit like dead things._

But Tom led Luna to a grassy area not far from the cave. With a firm grip on her hand, which felt increasingly like a leash, Tom dragged her into the deepest grass and then sat down, pulling her down as well. The grass was over their heads.

Tom released her hand, then, and closed his eyes, looking rather peaceful, for practically the first time. His lips still moved, however, framing nonsensical words and little hissing sounds. Then he quieted.

"It's nice here," Luna observed, looking up at the stars. Tom had mentioned dinner earlier...he was probably missing it now...and he hadn't removed his weed tiara.

Luna felt a tickle along her spine. Then again, at her wrist. She looked down and saw that a large snake was curling itself around her arm. And another worked its way over her shoulder. And another slid up her ankle and spiraled around her calf. Luna went still, her eyes even wider than they normally were, and she looked at Tom, who was positively blanketed in snakes and seemed pleased about it.

"I can speak to snakes," he boasted. "Snakes love me. Can you do that?"

Luna shook her head. "I wish I could," she managed. "I'm sure snakes would have interesting things to say."

"They're more interested in me than I am in them," Tom replied. "Like servants."

"I would make friends with snakes, if I could speak to them," Luna said, not judgementally.

"You haven't spoken to them," Tom said simply. "They get boring. But so do people."

A snake curled all the way around Luna's neck. She wasn't sure if Tom had told it to do so. Either way, she leaned back, giving the snakes full rein over her. They looped around her midriff, her legs, her head, but the one around her neck didn't tighten or constrict her. _They like me, _Luna thought, almost laughing because every movement tickled.

When the snakes stilled, she sat up to face Tom, who had her wand pointed at her. There was even a bit of light at the end of it.

"Are you afraid?" Tom asked her, keeping the wand aimed directly at her heart.

Luna thought it over. "No," she answered.

Tom edged the wand closer, holding it under her chin. "Why not?" he asked calmly.

"Because the worst thing you can do to me is kill me," she answered simply. "And, now that I think about it, I don't expect you to do that." She thought again. "I suppose you could take my memory, but there's no benefit to you there. And you could have the snakes hurt or kill me, if you want me hurt or killed. Really, I'm at your mercy from every angle. And I don't mind that."

Tom smiled. "You don't seem to think that I'm a good person now. You want me to believe that I'm a good person in the future?"

"I don't think there are good people or evil people," Luna answered.

"There is no good and evil," Tom said. "They're made up. There's only who can do what to whom."

"That was very good grammar," Luna said with a slight smile. "I don't agree, though."

"With what?"

"Some things can be called evil. People can't, but actions can."

"And what actions do I commit in the future?"

"I can't tell you that."

Every snake that had wound itself around her hissed simultaneously, in an unmistakably threatening way.

"The worst you can do, I don't fear," Luna reminded Tom. "Anyway, you don't want someone to talk to? In your timeline, I don't exist yet. I haven't been born. My parents aren't old enough for Hogwarts yet. I'm like an imaginary friend."

"Only you don't show up whenever I want," Tom mused. "...I could keep you here."

The snakes around Luna's wrists and ankles tightened their loops.

"Then you'd have to explain why someone who doesn't exist is coming with you to Hogwarts," Luna mused along with him. "But I suppose it's your choice. It's not as though I can make you decide one way or the other."

Tom moved closer to her, so that they were hip to hip, but facing opposite directions. He smelled like soap, and she like grass and wet flowers, and both were covered in snakes. He ran a hand through her long hair, and she couldn't see his facial expression because he sat in the shadows. He could see her face rather well.

All of a sudden, he withdrew his hand and set her wand on her lap. "Let's go back," he said.

...

They were soaking wet from rain and lake water when they returned to Tom's bedroom, and the TARDIS still hadn't reappeared.

Luna was exhausted, and Tom directed her to his bed, not allowing room for protest, while he sat in his desk chair. "How old are you, Luna Lovegood?" he asked.

"Eleven," Luna answered, rather impressed that, after not having spoken it for so long, Tom still remembered her full name.

"So am I," he said. "So, you're in your first year of Hogwarts?"

"Yes."

"What's it like?"

"Spoilers," she whispered, burrowing deeper into his pillow and closing her eyes.

"Is it big?" Tom persisted. "Are there loads of people?"

"Mmm..." Luna hummed noncommittally, already drifting off.

Tom sighed, and that was the last thing she heard.

...

And then the high whine of Mr. the Doctor was waking her up.

"Oy! Couldn't wait a few hours?" He shook the mattress, jostling both Luna and Tom, who had, at some point, donned pajamas and occupied the other end of the bed.

"Where did you go?" Luna asked dazedly.

"Had a certain...thing...to correct, just thought of it, but anyway, I'm back now. It's still today, isn't it?"

"It's tonight, now," Luna answered.

"Ah well...Few hours. Anyway, we're off."

Luna climbed out of bed to follow the Doctor into the TARDIS. "I'll see you, Tom."

"I'm going to King's Cross today," he told her urgently. "Will you come to see me while I'm at Hogwarts?"

"I'll try," she said sincerely. "Of course I'll try."

Then she disappeared again, only hesitating to make sure that she still had her wand and the little black book.

Tom was still wearing the tiara of weeds.


	14. Chapter 14

"Alright," the Doctor said, "since we're making up for lost time- and I am truly sorry about that -let's head to Hogwarts. Tom's Hogwarts, that is." He yanked theatrically at a lever.

"Hm..." Luna hummed in thought. "How will we find him there?"

"Oh, I borrowed the Marauder's Map from A. S. Potter in the distant future," the Doctor replied offhandedly.

"What?"

"What?" The Doctor grinned. "My point is, we'll find him. And I'm simply amazed at how brilliant you are."

"About what?" Luna asked.

"You had Voldemort resting beside you like a tamed viper. You know, he doesn't devote himself to other people easily. He's a bit of a lone wolf, as they say."

The TARDIS landed.

"Here we are!" the Doctor exclaimed, beginning to unfold a gigantic sheet of paper. "And Tom is...drat. The thing doesn't work in a time-neutral zone. We'll have to step out first."

He opened the door for Luna, and she stepped out, only to be collided-with by another child. The two of them fell to the ground in a tangle.

"Terribly sorry," the young boy was already saying. "Very sorry."

Luna sat up from her spot on the floor and looked at the boy. He was brown haired and disheveled and scarred in some parts of his face. He looked tired, but there was a certain boyish hope and wonder in his eyes. Underneath the alarm, of course.

"Hm..." She smiled, hoping to ease his worry over the mistake. "I'm alright. Are you? What's your name?"

"I'm Remus Lupin," the boy said while helping Luna to her feet. "I've got to go. My friends-" And he took off without finishing.

The Doctor had smacked himself in the forehead. "I am a _bad_ driver," he said, as though this had just dawned on him. "Back in the TARDIS, quick."

"We have time, don't we?" Luna pointed out.

"You can't just dodder about through wizarding history making friends with random people," the Doctor protested.

"I could, though, couldn't I?" Luna said with her dreamy smile. "You said I'm part impossible."

"That! Was in a different context!" the Doctor said, dragging Luna into the TARDIS and closing the door. "Let's be off, before we're hexed."

"Remus seemed lonely," Luna mused.

"He has friends," the Doctor said. "Good friends. Brilliant friends. But...Yes. He _will_ be lonely. He will be very lonely...in the future. It doesn't last long though." The Doctor seemed suddenly as old as he was. "If you fix Voldemort, Lovegood, you will help Remus, as well. You'll save his friends and his life. Already you've done so much."

"I want to see Tom," Luna assured the Doctor. "Of course I do. But there are other things in time and space. I'm only saying we have time in a bottle here. In a box."

The Doctor smiled wearily. "That we do. Now, to Tom."

...

Luna and Tom spent the whole day in the Astronomy Tower with the TARDIS while the Doctor roamed the school.

"You're a Ravenclaw, are you?" Tom said.

"Yes," Luna answered.

"I thought so. Are you a pureblood?"

"Yes." It was true; _impossible _though Clara Oswald Lovegood had been, she was a witch, most definitely. "Not that that matters much," Luna added.

"You shouldn't sit there," Tom said. "You might fall."

Luna sat perched on a balcony overlooking the whole of the castle and the sunlight on the lake. She smiled slightly, a quirky smile. "If I fall, you'll just tell Mr. the Doctor, and he'll catch me."

"He might not have time," Tom said.

"He always has _time_, Tom," Luna reminded him.

Tom seemed to think about this for a moment, as he went quiet. Then: "Are you still eleven?"

"Yes," Luna answered. "A few months into my first year, and the last time I saw you was the day before you left for King's Cross. How about you?"

"It's February, for me," he said. "And I saw you last on Christmas Day, and before that a week before Halloween. You aren't coming very often."

Luna slid down from the balcony railing at last and padded over to Tom. "Do the other Slytherins tease you for being a half-blood?" she asked.

Tom did not expect this question. He blinked, then looked irritated, then cleared his countenance. "At first they tried. They've since learned not to."

Luna angled her head, her wide eyes searching Tom's dark ones. "You haven't been hurting people, have you?"

"You'd know what I've been doing, if you visited more."

"That isn't really an answer."

Tom glanced down at Luna's feet. "Why don't you wear shoes, Luna?"

It was now Luna's turn to receive a question she was unprepared for. She smiled dazedly. "Creatures called nargles have stolen them from under my bed."

The dark eyes narrowed. "You're lying," Tom observed.

"I might not be," Luna disagreed. "Nargles may be unseasonal, but it's possible." Then her eyes went all distant. "All the same, my shoes seem to have disappeared. They'll turn up eventually." She sat down on the floor.

"Why'd you lie?" Tom asked.

"Because I like to think the best of people," Luna answered while flicking her wand idly in front of her to create colorful sparks. "Better that than assume the worst and be wrong."

"So your shoes have been stolen by some Ravenclaw girls?" Tom concluded, rather pragmatically. He sat down on the floor, as well. "You know, if you took me to your time, I could make it so they never bother you again."

Luna looked at him askance. "If I took you to my time," she said, "you could make a great many things happen, I'm sure."

Tom grinned cheekily. "How can you expect me to improve the future if I'm never allowed to see it?" he asked. "Think how much could be learned."

"That's what your time at Hogwarts is for, isn't it?" Luna asked. "Learning? Haven't you got homework?"

"I've finished it," Tom said dismissively. Then, his eyes widened a bit. "If you're only a few months into your year, that means I know more magic than you do right now."

Luna thought this over, then nodded, only a _little_ perturbed. "That's true."

Tom smirked. "Slughorn says I'm advanced. Loads of other teachers, too. They say I'm a magical prodigy."

"That's nice," Luna replied.

"Are you proud?"

"Yes," Luna said, angling her head again because she found herself curious about Tom's forthcoming behavior. All that she knew about Voldemort indicated that, by all rights, he should be pushing her away right now instead of drawing her closer. Then again, it was probable that he saw her as a possession at most, a tool at least. She was his bridge to the future. It only made sense that he become close to her. But what was this need for approval? Was he ensuring that her opinion of him was at the right level that she could be used?

This was a good theory, although trying to fit it in with Sixteen-Year-Old-Tom's actions would require more thought.

"There are things you could learn from me," Tom added.

"I'm sure," said Luna.

Tom stood, taking out his wand and starting to pace. "It's fantastic," he said. "I've always been able to do things, but my wand makes it so powerful."

Luna nodded along as though his words were some odd sort of song whose beat she found interesting.

"How about you?" Tom asked. "I know you've got magic, but are you any good?"

"Nearly top marks, if that's what you're asking," Luna answered in a borderline-singsong voice.

"But are you any _good_, though?" Tom persisted. "Top marks are easy. Could you duel me, though?"

Luna started stretching out her body gracefully. "I don't think so, Tom."

"You could try."

"I won't, though."

Tom grinned again. "Sure you will."

"Why's that?" Luna asked, freezing mid-stretch to fix a curious look on the boy across the room.

"Because..." He pointed his wand at the TARDIS door. "_Alohamora," _he said, and the door swung open. Before Luna could do much more then look stunned by the turn of events, Tom Riddle had sprinted through the doorway, into the TARDIS.


	15. Chapter 15

"Tom!" Luna called, scampering after him into the blue box.

"It's gigantic in here," the boy said gleefully. There was a dark hunger in his eyes, and he hovered at the TARDIS console like it was a Hogwarts feast. Without looking away, he sent a spell shooting over Luna's shoulder, closing the TARDIS door behind her.

"Stop," Luna protested.

"Stop me," Tom said, jamming a button and sending the TARDIS lurching.

Luna gripped a railing and was irritated to feel her wand slipping from behind her ear, dropping to the floor, and rolling away. She followed it at a crawl. "You don't know how to drive," she reminded Tom from her spot on the floor.

He appeared not to hear her; he continued messing about the console, a pensive, focused look on his face.

Luna found her wand and immediately wished that she knew actual combat spells. She knew more than many her age, especially since she read books that were not written by Gilderoy Lockhart, the secret Belgian shape-shifting Quidditch-playing spy, but she had focused more on constructive types of magic: healing spells and confusing spells, mostly. One spell to give someone the feeling of having water in their ears, although she hadn't had the opportunity to practice that one on a real person.

She opted for a simpler alternative:

"Impedimenta!" she shouted, sending a jet of light at Tom.

With a wave of his wand, he deflected the beam and kept playing at the TARDIS console.

Luna blinked. Twice, now, he had cast a spell without saying anything out loud. That sort of magic wasn't learned by first years, not usually. Had the curriculums changed so much over the decades?

The TARDIS lunged almost completely sideways, knocking both Luna and Tom off of their feet and disrupting Luna's train of thought.

"You've annoyed her!" she called to Tom.

"Who?" Tom asked.

"The TARDIS!" Luna answered. "She doesn't like being ordered about like that! You've got to be kind!"

Luna did not see what Tom did next; she only heard him moving around and felt the TARDIS steady out several moments later.

"There," Tom sighed, sounding pleased with herself.

"What happened?" Luna asked in a small voice; she was feeling slightly nauseous.

"I eased her worries," Tom said smugly. He offered a hand to Luna and helped her to her feet.

"You spoke to her?" Luna queried, frowning a bit.

"She's very forthcoming, if you know what to say," Tom boasted.

"She spoke back?"

"Not in so many words. It was very...mental."

Luna was somewhat unnerved, now. She had not thought of the TARDIS as an entity that could be won over by words from Tom Riddle. What on earth could he have done? Was the TARDIS planning something?

Suddenly, Tom slipped the wand out of Luna's hand, holding it in the same hand that held his own. "And it seems I won the duel, if you can call it that."

"You lied, didn't you?" Luna sighed. "About still being a first year."

"It was a lie," Tom agreed affably. "It made you feel safe, though, didn't it?"

"I never feel safe around you, Tom," she said, as matter-of-factly as one might state that they never put salt on their salads.

"Why not?" Tom asked. Despite his words, he seemed pleased with her response.

"Because I know you might kill me," Luna answered, then hummed serenely. "I'm not scared of you," she added as an afterthought.

"You know I might kill you, but you're not scared?" Tom repeated. He chuckled: "You're mad, then."

"Loony," Luna corrected him half-heartedly. "Loony Lovegood." She smiled. "Are _you_ frightened, Tom?" she asked, almost brightly.

"No. Of what?" he asked.

"The fact that I'm someone you can't frighten."

Tom was not frightened. Quite the contrary; the look in Lovegood's eyes entranced him nearly as much as the TARDIS had moments ago. She had a look as if she had already met her nightmares, if that made sense. It was an enigmatic sort of look, not oblivious to the horrors of the world but immune to them. It was fascinating, especially seeing as Lovegood was a person who he owned. "Coincidentally, you'll find it difficult to frighten _me_, Lovegood."

"What year are you, really?"

"Second year," he said.

She took her wand back from him.

She simply...reached over and drew it from his grip.

Tom was vaguely stunned by this turn of events. Had he been so distracted that he did not even think to stop her? Even with her wand, she was no threat to him, but all the same.

"Let's go back to Hogwarts, Tom," Luna suggested. She had a way of singing her words that made Tom actually like his name. Somehow, she framed it in an appealing way, so much so that he considered making her say it again. He wanted her to keep saying it.

However, now was the time for showing off:

"We're _at_ Hogwarts," he said with a wide smile. He gestured at the TARDIS door. "Take a look."

Luna looked faintly wary, but she pranced up to the door in little hop-steps and opened it.


	16. Chapter 16

The Doctor was loaded down with magical books and Honeydukes candy when he returned to the Astronomy tower to find the TARDIS missing. "Oy! Lovegood, time to go! I've just returned from the Restricted Section and I-" He noticed the emptiness of the space before him. Immediately, he let his bounty fall to the floor and commenced to pacing the room in long, gliding steps, wielding his sonic screwdriver like...well, like a madman.

Then, he let loose a rapid-fire string of Gallifreyan vulgarities. _Riddle missing. Lovegood missing. TARDIS missing. _

The Doctor, at last, stilled, his expression stony in such a way that anyone with so much as a casual knowledge of his reputation would have been sent running by the sight of it. _Riddle. If you've done anything to either of them, you're going to want to hide_.

...

Riddle had not lied; they were, in fact, at Hogwarts. Or, more accurately, they were _over_ Hogwarts. Higher, even, than thestrals normally flew, so that all of the castle (and some of the grounds) was visible to Luna.

"When are we, Tom?" Luna asked dazedly, running the tip of her wand over her lips the way she sometimes did when deep in thought. She was not in the ideal situation here.

"A few decades in my future," Tom answered with a slight smirk. "Are you going to stand right at the edge like that? I might push you off."

"I'm not afraid of heights, Tom. When are we?"

"I've just told you."

"And I suppose you won't be any more specific. I expected as much. Will you bring us back?"

"I don't think so," Tom said breezily.

"Hm," Luna sighed. Then, she whipped around, pointed her wand, and shouted, "_Rictusempra!_"

Tom was apparently not prepared for this one; he staggered back, contorting his body in discomfort and giggling at the sudden sensation of being tickled. It only took him a moment to recover, but in that moment, Luna raced past him to the TARDIS controls.

"Oh my..." Luna breathed, for once horrified good and proper. The TARDIS's controls were swirling with darkness and bitingly cold to the touch. "Tom, what have you done?"

A spell hit Luna squarely in the chest, and she fell to the ground, feeling as though she had lost more than half of her energy; now, all she wanted was to lie down.

"I win again," Tom said. "You're rubbish at dueling, Lovegood."

Luna was not interested in arguing that she was only in her first year, and not even well into her first year, at that. She instead repeated, a bit faintly, "What have you done to the TARDIS, Tom?"

"At the moment," said Tom, and he eased at one of the TARDIS's levers, "I am attempting to park it."

"You can't enter Hogwarts, Tom. You'll be recognized by someone...by Dumbledore. Meddling with time's illegal, you know."

"Oh, I'll get in. At the very least, I'll have to get you to the Hospital Wing before that hex takes full effect."

Luna tried to sit up, but the vertigo overtook her, and she passed out.

...

When Luna awoke, she was indeed lying in a bed in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing. The room was dark and full of the sound of sleeping...and whispering.

_"James?" _a boy's voice was saying. _"What are you doing in here?"_

_"Well, you've hardly got a monopoly on the Hospital Wing, Moony. I'm allowed in, too."_

_"Yes, but what happened to you?"_

_"I was out flying and..." _The boy paused, then went on cautiously, _"Something distracted me."_

_"Was that something female?" _the boy called Moony asked dryly.

_"No," _James protested. _"There was this blue box hanging in the sky."_

_"A blue box?"_

_"Yeah. I nearly flew right into it; appeared out of nowhere, it did. Could've flattened me."_

_"Things don't just appear in the sky over Hogwarts, James."_

_"Well-contributed, Moony. I had no idea."_

There was the sound of something smacking James.

_"Ow! I'm just saying, it _did _appear. I know it's strange."_

_"Did you tell someone?"_

_"I might've mentioned it to Padfoot, before I blacked out. Really, Remus, I've been a bit busy."_

As the conversation progressed, Luna quietly (and dizzily) rose from her cot and neared the two boys. They caught sight of her once she stood at the foot of Remus's bed.

_"Can we help you?" _James asked defensively.

_"Just making sure you're real," _Luna said dreamily. _"One can never be sure, with voices in the dark. You might have been some breed of night terrors."_

_"Night terror?" _James repeated. _"Moony's a _right_ terror."_

_"And James is a night _error_," _Remus returned calmly.

Luna smiled. Her good mood faded, however, when she remembered that Riddle was now displaced into a period of time that might just know his name. Not his real name, of course; almost no one knew his real name. All the same...

_"Who are you?" _Remus asked her.

_"Luna Lovegood," _Luna replied.

_"What year, what House?" _James asked.

_"Ravenclaw. The year's a bit wonky, though..."_

_"Wonky?" _James repeated incredulously. _"It's numbered one through seven! Which are you?"_

At that moment, Luna's head swam, and she crumpled to the ground.

With muffled exclamations, James and Remus clambered from their beds and helped her to her feet.

_"Are you alright?" _Remus asked.

_"Rather dizzy," _Luna said unsteadily. _"Got hit by a hex, and I'm not sure what kind...I might have over-estimated my strength."_

_"Which bed's yours?" _James asked.

_"I'll get Madame Pomfrey," _Remus added.

Honestly, the boys' vigilance was an asset, because Luna was already sinking back into unconsciousness. All she could repeat as she did so was: _"Where's Tom? Where's he gone? Where's Tom?"_

...

When Luna woke once more, it was to a significantly-younger-than-Luna-was-used-to Madame Pomfrey spoon-feeding her some sort of potion that was nearly as thick as porridge. "There you are," the woman said. "You'll be needing another dose in three hours."

"Thank you, Madame Pomfrey," said a familiar voice at Luna's bedside; Tom had returned, only he seemed to have altered his appearance somewhat; Luna still recognized him and saw little difference, but a part of her was also aware that there was a spell warping his looks for others.

"Do not excite the patient too much," the matron said sternly. "She's already pale as a sheet."

Once they were alone- and truly alone, Luna noticed; the Hospital Wing was completely empty, apart from them -Tom relaxed back in his seat.

"Where's the TARDIS?" Luna asked him hoarsely.

"Parked it somewhere nobody will find it," Tom said.

"Is it in the Forest?" Luna asked.

"Yes," Tom said. "In a place only I know."

"In all the years Hogwarts has existed, you think there _is_ such a place?"

"Yes," Tom replied obstinately.

"Well, you would know best, Tom."

"It's Taurus," Tom said. "While we're here, call me Taurus Black."

"You don't think the Blacks will notice you're not a relative of theirs?" Luna asked.

"I've said I'm from Albania."

"So you do finally get to join an old pureblood family," Luna observed lightly. "Does that make you happy, Tom? Er, Taurus."

Tom only scowled, upset that she had brought his blood status up. He, by now, knew well enough that Luna was not prone to filtering herself nearly enough before speaking, but that did not condone her audacity.

Luna closed her eyes for a second as her head throbbed. "You hexed me," she recalled.

"You tickled me," Tom returned. "Anyway, we had to get into the school somehow."

"And where have you been?" Luna asked, opening her eyes again. When she opened her eyes, it was always a bit like car headlights turning on.

"The library," Tom replied. "Reading up on 'Tom Riddle'."

"I assume you found nothing?" Luna deduced, drawing her knees to her chest quaintly.

"Oh, I found loads," Tom said, and there was a dark mania behind his eyes. "Turns out, I didn't even have to read anything; I could have asked anybody in the school. They all know the name 'Tom Riddle'."

Luna frowned. This was not how time was supposed to go. Had the timelines been altered so much that Tom never concocted his pseudonym? "What do the books say?" she asked.

"Apparently..." Tom began, still with that mildly disconcerting (and, were anyone besides Luna Lovegood to have seen it, far _more_ than just mildly disconcerting) gleam in his eyes, but he was interrupted by a portly, brown-haired boy bursting into the Hospital Wing.

"James! Remus!" he shouted, then was brought up short when he saw that the boys he sought were not in the Hospital Wing.

"They've gone," Luna told him.

"Do you know where?" the boy asked, looking listless.

Tom and Luna both shook their heads, and the boy left with a partially dejected, partially determined air about him.

"Apparently," Tom continued, as though there had been no interruption, "I am a rather dark wizard." He let the words sink in for a minute before grinning a rather horrible grin. "Is that why you saw fit to go back in time and seek me out? You hoped to redeem the murderer?"

Luna only stared at him, but she could feel her heart constricting with every word he spoke.

"Oh, Lovegood," Tom sighed. "That's so _you_. But people don't change, you know."

"What a cynical thing to say," Luna answered, a bit high-pitched. "Or, if not cynical, very Muggle of you."

Tom was on his feet in half an instant. "What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Magic is the embodiment of change, Tom. Your upbringing is showing, if you think that it's impossible to fundamentally change a person."

Tom grabbed Luna's arm _hard_. "And who says I'm a _person_, Lovegood?" he seethed through a laconic smile. "You naive little girl."

Luna only smiled, the daydreamy smile that she adopted whenever older Ravenclaw girls picked on her; she knew that it drove them crazy. "If you're not going to kill me, Tom- and I suggest you don't, considering who the Headmaster here is -you should calm yourself, I think."

"I won't spare you because of Dumbledore," Tom told her before releasing her arm. "I'll spare you because, stupid though you are, you're _mine_."

Luna would have shivered, and she likely would later, once she was alone in her Ravenclaw dormitory, but at the moment, she was more curious than anything else. "I'd like to think I'm my own," she mentioned offhandedly.

"I'm sure you'd like to think a lot of things," Tom said.

"You think you're the first person to insult me, Tom?" she asked, angling her head sideways. "Really, you are silly." _Silly_, incidentally, was not something she ever thought she would be calling Voldemort.

"Silly as a person who thinks she can just go back in time and change the heart of Thomas Marvolo Riddle?"

The sound of something being knocked over at the other end of the room startled both of them. Immediately, Tom fired a spell (wordlessly) into the empty air. The spell hit against something, and an Invisibility Cloak fell away to reveal James and Remus and another boy with overgrown, dark hair. All three of them looked flabbergasted.

Tom reeled back to fire a presumably-much-worse spell, but Luna tackled him with a hug and refused to let go until violently shoved and deposited back onto her bed. By that time, the three boys had managed to sprint to the exit and out of the Hospital Wing.

As Tom turned on Luna, she queried, with the smallest of triumphant smiles, "How much do you reckon they heard?"

Tom, for several moments, looked as though he might physically smack her. Instead, he replied, in a strained but cool voice, "Enough." Then he grabbed her arm again and dragged her from the bed. "We're getting back to the TARDIS."

Luna said nothing and simply let him drag her. There was no need, after all, to say anything; she had won and he was livid. A part of her was somewhat afraid.


	17. Chapter 17

Tom dragged Luna deep into the forest (at such a speed that her headache returned with a vengeance), never lightening his grip on her arm. Luna glanced, periodically, behind them, to see if Dumbledore would come gliding in pursuit any time soon. She was not sure how she felt about the idea. Or, more accurately, she was not sure whether she was more frightened of a scenario in which Dumbledore came or one in which he did not.

Tom stopped suddenly. "It should be here..." he murmured.

"Perhaps it's invisible," Luna suggested quietly.

"It isn't invisible! It's gone!" Tom shouted. He turned to face her. "Did you do something?"

"I was hexed, Tom," Luna answered in something of a morose tone. "What could I have done?"

"Then where _is_ it?" Tom demanded, releasing Luna's arm but tightening his grip on his wand.

"Where indeed?" a smooth voice asked.

Luna couldn't help but smile at the familiarity of the voice, and at the fact that she had never heard Mr. the Doctor sound so smooth. Usually, he was a bit like a hen, clucking around, but now, standing in the shadows of the Forbidden Forest, he looked...powerful. Like a time lord.

"How did you get here?" Tom asked the Doctor, his tone having returned to calm alarmingly quickly. Like the eye of a hurricane. Only the behavior of his jaw betrayed his frustration.

"Come on, Tom. All of the wizarding world as a resource? How did I get here? Albus Dumbledore and Nicholas Flamel and I go on vacation in Bermuda together every twenty years. I've tutored some of the most prominent minds of the wizarding community on my downtime between rendezvous with Lovegood. How d'you reckon time turners get made?" He approached Tom. "Did you really think I didn't have a back-up plan?" he asked almost menacingly.

Tom smiled, an eerie approximation of a child's grin. "Just a bit of clean fun, Doctor. Wanted to get some reading done in a different time. Are you truly cross about a young boy's curiosity?"

Without answering, the Doctor turned to look at Luna. "You said he hexed you?" He didn't wait for her reply; he already had his sonic out and scanning her.

"She only said that she was hexed," Tom sighed, exasperated.

"Some head trauma." With his ominous tone, the Doctor made it clear that he was not amused by Tom's actions in the slightest. "You ought to be in the Hospital Wing."

"I'm due another healing potion in three hours," Luna said.

"I'm taking you back," the Doctor said decisively.

"Alright. We'll have another go next weekend, then?" Luna prompted.

"No," the Doctor said firmly.

"You know that we will, Mr. the Doctor. It's already happened."

"He might have lied about that. It's not a fixed point."

"Haven't I got a choice?"

The Doctor did not answer. He now stood with his back to both Luna and Tom.

Tom took advantage of this fact and raised his wand. "You're not taking her away," he said flatly.

"Are you gonna stop me, Tom?" the Doctor asked loudly. "Hex me, and you'll never find the TARDIS. Then you're trapped here at the mercy of my good friend Albus. And when I come around again, you'll be at my mercy, too."

"I'm not frightened of you," Tom said.

"And you won't be," the Doctor said, suddenly very clinical-sounding. "Until it's too late for you. Isn't that how it goes?"

"Mr. the Doctor," Luna said, approaching him. Both the Doctor and Tom noticed the way that she always looked like she was wandering no matter how deliberately she walked somewhere. She seemed to drift from place to place. "You're upset. What's happened?"

"What else, you mean?"

"Yes."

"Nothing. Everything's fine."

Luna lowered her voice: "We have made changes, you know," she whispered. "Things have gone all...different."

"You think you've improved him?" the Doctor deadpanned.

"I don't know what I've done, but I do see that some things have changed."

The Doctor bent closer to Luna in order to gravely whisper, "He's done something to the TARDIS. Something's wrong with her. She still functions fine but she's...silent. As though the box's soul has gone into some sort of...coma." He shot a watery glare at Tom where the boy stood, several meters away. "I don't know how to fix her, because the machine itself is working fine; in all appearances, nothing is wrong, but..."

Luna nodded solemnly.

"I'm going to be spending some time in your Hogwarts," the Doctor continued. "Conferring with Albus, keeping an eye on things, seeing as I know how the timeline was meant to go."

"Alright," Luna said.

"We've got to leave now, though."

Luna nodded.

...

They deposited Tom back in his time before returning to Luna's Hogwarts.

Upon returning, Luna found herself fascinated by the mundane lives of the students in the castle; how they doddered around like time was linear and seemed so sure about what was real and what was not. She began interjecting into discussions more frequently. Periodically, she would drop the name Voldemort in conversations, but it was never recognized. The name seemed to have been erased from time.


	18. Chapter 18

"Miss Lovegood."

Luna looked up with what one might call a "vague" expression. "Yes, Professor Snape?"

"Are you able to read?" the man asked contemptuously.

"Yes, Professor Snape!" Luna answered with much too sunny a smile. Then, frowning slightly: "Aren't you, sir?"

Professor Snape pressed his lips together into a thin line. "I am. Would you care to explain, Miss Lovegood..." (He raised his voice slightly, so that any student who had not already been listening now could not help but do so.) "...why your potion has yet to turn yellow?"

"I haven't squeezed the manticore venom out of the manticore stingers yet, professor," Luna answered clearly.

"'Yet'?" Snape repeated. "That was step three, and you have by now completed steps four, five, and seven. Would you care to explain why you saw fit to complete the steps of this potion out of order?"

Again, Luna frowned slightly. "You said the most important ingredient in the potion was time, sir. I thought that meant we could do it out of order, since _time_ doesn't have to go in order. I expect a man of your academic stature knows that better than I, sir."

"Miss Lovegood, I have never heard such nonsense," Snape snapped.

"Really?" Luna replied, genuinely surprised. "Was that the most nonsensical thing you've ever heard? Truly?"

"Miss Lovegood, you are now disrupting class," Snape said coolly. "That will be ten points from Ravenclaw, in addition to the twenty points you've already lost for asking me if I could read moments ago."

"But you can, though, sir," Luna said lightly. "So I don't see what the trouble is."

Just as Snape was about to respond, another Ravenclaw interceded, "Don't mind her, professor! She's barmy."

Professor Snape stood still a moment before returning to his desk. Over his shoulder, he said, "That will be an additional ten points, Miss Lovegood, for subjecting all of us to this conversation for too long."

Every Ravenclaw in the room groaned, and the girl seated beside Luna kicked the chair out from under her. She hit the ground, rather painfully. There were a few snickers as Luna sat up, looking as though she had just woken from a dream. She gathered her books and papers, which has fallen with her, back into her bag.

Her hand hesitated halfway through putting away the last book. It was the diary that Tom had given her.

It occurred to her that she had yet to use it.

Having the Doctor in Hogwarts for these last few weeks had been pleasant. Every now and then, she'd see him sprinting around the building or grounds or dining in the Great Hall (sometimes with the students, sometimes with the teachers) or just sitting on a staircase, chatting with Mrs. Norris. Still, she missed Tom. In a strange way, he was like a friend to her, so much so that she kept the diary in her hands rather than putting it away.

"For your homework," Snape said to the class, "you will be composing an essay on the uses of manticore venom. That's two rolls of parchment, and I will be measuring length. You are dismissed."

The students exited with alacrity.

Luna exited last (She had long known, by now, that the safest place to be in a crowd was behind it.) and was pleased to recall that the next several hours of her day were free.

Once she had completed the long trek to the Forbidden Forest and was seated in the clearing where the thestrals liked to sleep, she opened the little book from Tom and took out her quill pen.

...

"Mr..._Doctor_, you are not a student!" Professor McGonagall said, her words in conflict with her no-nonsense tone. "I should not have to tell you that it is wrong to pester the ghosts!"

"Pester?" the Doctor repeated with a very childish tone of indignation. "I was only asking a few questions! It was vital to my research!"

"Sir Nicholas complained that you wouldn't stop waving your wand at him. He said it made an infernal sound."

"Sonic screwdriver," the Doctor murmured.

The old woman narrowed her eyes. "You managed to annoy Peeves, as well," Professor McGonagall pointed out, gesturing at the poltergeist who was at that moment running amuck in the room. "_Peeves_. Doctor, are you aware that, in all my tenure at Hogwarts, I have never known someone to genuinely irritate Peeves? The only being in this castle more irritating than Peeves is-"

"Minerva?"

Professor McGonagall sighed in exasperation as an obnoxiously attractive blond man entered her office.

"Minerva!" Gilderoy Lockhart repeated with condescending fondness. "I heard this hullabaloo and worried that you were in mortal peril."

"Well, Gilderoy, seeing as it is merely a poltergeist-"

"How fortunate you are that I have arrived! I know precisely how to rectify the situation!"

"I doubt that, Lockhart," the Doctor said. "Memory charms don't work on poltergeists, you know."

Lockhart's face fell. "What did you say?" he asked seriously.

"Nothing!" the Doctor replied, patting Lockhart on the shoulder. "Run along, boyo. The adults are talking."

McGonagall's lips twitched into what was nearly a smile for a fraction of a second. "Doctor, it is wrong to disrespect a Hogwarts professor."

"You've just finished saying I'm not a student," the Doctor replied jovially.

McGonagall actually did smile, now. "Well, then, that's the matter settled, isn't it?"

"Settled?" Lockhart repeated. "Minerva, he hasn't apologized!"

"Gilderoy, how would you have me punish him? Should I ban him from Hogsmeade? Take points away?"

The Doctor's face lit up suddenly. "That reminds me! I'm going to go play with the Sorting Hat!" And, just like that, the man was off, flailing his limbs a bit as he ran.

"For whatever reason, Albus still hasn't told me what it is that man is doing here," Lockhart noted aloofly.

"The Headmaster needn't explain himself to his professors, Gilderoy," McGonagall reminded him.

"I'm hardly _just_ a professor, though, Minerva. Perhaps it is the curse of my keen perception, but something about this 'Doctor' seems odd."

It took herculean effort for McGonagall to refrain from responding with _Everything about him seems odd, you fool! Even the first years notice that much! _It was true; the Doctor was popular among the students for that very reason. He had such a strong presence, such a depth, and such a bubbly disposition. He was at stark contrast, then, with Lockhart, who had a weak and shallow presence but a similarly bubbly disposition and sought the same air of mystery.

She could already tell that Potter, Granger, and Weasley were intrigued. Malfoy had probably written to his father by now, in the hopes of finding some new insight to share with his Slytherin peers.

"No matter," Lockhart said breezily. "Opportunities to deriddle him will no doubt present themselves in time." He left the office to a chorus of rude noises from Peeves.

...

It took Luna a minute to decide what to write, but eventually she went with:

_This diary is the intellectual property of Miss Luna E. C. Lovegood._

She looked out at the lake, then. The afternoon was filled with the symphony of birdsong, but Luna felt strangely empty, ever since Potions class. She wasn't even moved to sadness, per se; she just felt completely blank. It was to this emptiness that she attributed her moderate reaction when she looked down at the book on her lap and saw that the page was blank.

Surely she had just written...Was this a joke? Making the ink disappear? Was it a trick? Was someone watching from the bushes? Someone with a level of self-control that was atypical among Luna's peers; she couldn't even hear any giggling.

Experimentally, she wrote out the same message again, this time watching the page. Sure enough, after a moment, the words vanished.

And she still couldn't hear anyone laughing at her.

Luna tried out another message:

_Will this disappear?_

Again, the words went away.

_Is this a game?_ she wrote.

The page blankened itself.

Somewhere in herself, Luna happened upon a smile. _Thomas Riddle is the silliest boy I think I've ever met, _she wrote.

The words disappeared.

Then...ink started to stain the page on its own accord, forming the words: _Who__ is silly?_

Luna stared at these new words for a moment. They lingered on the page for longer than hers had, but then they, too, vanished...

...and were replaced by more words, despite her quill still not having touched the page in a while:

_Oh, Lovegood, I wish I could see your face!_

Having found the sense of incredulity that she had originally been missing, Luna wrote in large, deep letters on the again-blank page, _TOM?_


	19. Chapter 19

_Greetings, my dear Lovegood._

Luna wondered how smugness could so clearly conveyed in his handwriting alone.

After those words disappeared, more replaced them:

_When are you right now?_

It took a second, but Luna smiled through her dazedness and wrote, _Still first year, for me. Not very long after you gave me this. What sort of magic is this, exactly? And when is it for you?_

The ink disappeared a second after she finished writing, but the response waited several moments before appearing: _Are you alone?_

Of course, she knew that this question could be a risky one to answer. Lacking much by way of self-preservation at that moment, she chose to take that risk. _I'm at Hogwarts, but I'm sitting by myself. I don't think you answered my question, though. Also, why doesn't the ink stay?_

_Is the ink your greatest concern, Lovegood?_

_No, I suppose not. I'd still like an answer to all of my questions, though._

_What does it matter what kind of magic it is? Can't you just be amazed?_

_You're sounding like Mr. The Doctor, now._

Again, the response took a bit longer. _You shouldn't tell him about this. It's best to keep this diary between us._

_A secret diary?_

_Yes._

_Why?_

_Because I gave this gift to you. Not to him._

Rather than committing to a response, Luna began to sketch a cornish pixie. To her mild frustration, the moment she dipped her quill back in the ink, the beginning parts of her sketch started to vanish. _How do I__ make it stop doing that?_

_This isn't a sketchpad, Lovegood. Promise me you'll keep this book a secret. I want to know that we can share anything in here without fear._

Just before the final word could disappear, Luna traced it with her own quill: _fear. _She wrote nothing else.

_You know that I care about you very much, don't you, Luna?_

This time, she traced the word "care". Then, she added: _When is it for you, Tom?_

_It's hard to explain. _The pause was almost imperceptible. _But I can show you._

...

Professor Dumbledore was not surprised to find the Doctor already in his office when he arrived.

"Albus!" the time lord exclaimed. "Just finished taking a ride in your Pensieve. Got to say, memory visits are to time travel what scuba diving is to submarining." Before Dumbledore could respond, the Doctor was wrinkling his nose and saying, "That was a rubbish analogy. All the same..."

"Doctor," Dumbledore greeted warmly. "I've just been examining your TARDIS."

The Doctor's expression darkened. "Yes?"

Dumbledore seated himself, wearily, at his desk. "Are you familiar with Horcruxes?"

All at once, the Doctor was alight with fantastic fury. "He didn't turn my TARDIS into a Horcrux," he protested, looking like he was moments away from searching out Riddle and doing him very real harm.

"No," Dumbledore assured him hastily. "No, he did not turn the TARDIS into a Horcrux."

The Doctor relaxed a great deal. "You might have started with that, but...go on."

"When Horcruxes are made," Dumbledore continued, "fragments of souls are bonded to the item being used, such that the soul fragment and the item cannot be separated without the destruction of both, except of course-"

"...except when the witch or wizard in question experiences true remorse," the Doctor finished almost scornfully. "Which mends everything."

"Precisely," Dumbledore agreed, sending the Doctor a curious look over his half-moon spectacles. "But that is the matter entirely: The only magically-secure way to house a soul is in the original body, to which it is already bonded, or by crafting a magical bond between the soul and the object, which in turn requires the fragmenting of the soul, by way of cold-blooded murder, and a very complicated sequence of magic besides. While a soul fragment can easily be placed inside an object, neglecting to bond to the object renders it just as easy to remove, with the proper set of spells. And the time lords, in all their erudition, had no reason to consider this when crafting their TARDISes."

"You're saying he took the TARDIS's soul," the Doctor said flatly. His expression, to Dumbledore's eyes, lent new meaning to the phrase "the Oncoming Storm".

"Removing it from its machine host wouldn't have been tricky, for a boy of Tom's talent," Dumbledore stated gravely. "Harnessing all of the soul's power, however...Even now, I'm not sure he'll have mastered it."

"My TARDIS's entire life force is in the hands of a snake-milking psychopath with magical powers and no nose," the Doctor seethed, stalking toward the door.

"No nose?" Dumbledore repeated.

"It's over your head," the Doctor shot back with vitriol that Albus knew was not meant for him.

"Young men these days have no respect," the portrait of Phineas Nigellus complained from the wall as the Doctor exited.

"That's no young man," another deceased headmaster disagreed.


	20. Chapter 20

Luna did not expect to be pulled into a memory when she consented to being "shown" the answers to her questions.

All the same, soon she found herself in free-fall, her skirt flying up around her torso so that she had to assume Marilyn Monroe position in midair (Marilyn Monroe was a Muggle about whom Luna knew plenty, because Marilyn Monroe had had a secret affair with Gellert Grindelwald, leading ultimately and tragically to her demise. Not that most wizards would admit this.). Then there was marble floor under her, and she was on a dark street, in front of a shop that said _Borgin &amp; Burkes._

Beside her stood Tom, albeit his sixteen-year-old self.

"This is Knockturn Alley," Luna observed.

Tom did not speak. He gave no indication that he had heard her.

"What am I doing here?" Luna persisted.

Instead of answering, Tom walked through her. He just...walked _through_ her, as if he were a ghost, or as if she were. He entered the shop without looking back to see if she was following.

Of course she was supposed to follow, since this was the scene that Tom was showing her to answer her questions.

But Luna was curious. Instead of following Tom into the shop, she walked further down the street. As she walked, the setting darkened, until it was pitch black and silent and all she could sense was the ground beneath her. Then even the ground left, and she was suspended in darkness.

_What are you doing? _The words scrawled themselves into the darkness in white ink. Somehow, they _tasted_ of irritation.

"I wanted to see how far the memory goes," Luna answered aloud.

_Why? I thought you wanted an answer to your questions._

"I became a bit distracted, I suppose. I was curious. This is an odd sort of magic, you know."

Instead of answering, Tom changed the setting: he placed her in a room that she instinctively knew was behind the shop. Also in the room were Tom, the greasy shop owner, and a lean man dressed in the attire of a Ministry employee. Not just any employee: he looked as though he was from the Department of Mysteries.

"So you tell me," the shop owner drawled to the Ministry man, "that you cannot pay your debt?"

The Ministry man had a scornful look. "Surely you can overlook a few stray Galleons."

The shop owner shook his head with a terrible sort of smile. "Riddle, read off Mr. Mulligan's history of purchases."

With a flourish that caused Luna to laugh a bit (not that anybody in the room was in a position to notice), Tom unrolled a scroll and began to read off: "Dragon loin, splinching cloak, skin removing powder, throat of-"

"Alright, alright," the Ministry man, Mulligan, interrupted. He had gone more and more ashen-faced as Tom read.

"Quite a sum," the shop owner surmised. "Pity if such an incriminating list were to fall into the wrong hands."

"I can't pay," Mulligan insisted. "What do you want from me?"

The shop owner scratched his chin. (Luna wished she had her spectre-specs; she wondered which person in that room had the most wrack spurts.) "Oftentimes goods can be redeemed for services," the shop owner mused. "The Department of Mysteries is an interesting place indeed. Do you have any secrets that would be worth, to me, what the secrets in Tom's hand are worth to you?"

Mulligan looked reluctant, but still he leaned forward and whispered to the shop owner (and consequently to Tom, who was trying to pretend that he wasn't listening nearly as closely as he was), "They've cracked time travel."

"Who has?" the shop owner asked, a greedy glimmer in his eyes.

"The Department," Mulligan replied. "They've made a sort of...necklace that can send one back in time. We call them time turners."

The shop owner began to grin widely.

"This cannot become common knowledge," Mulligan insisted. "The use of such tools would have guaranteed unforeseen consequences."

"It's a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Mulligan," the shop owner said, still with that awful grin, and Tom took his cue to escort a flustered Mulligan out.

Then Luna woke up in her spot on the Hogwarts grounds, in the grass with a baby thestral nudging at her ankle and Tom's diary under her face, open to a deceptively blank page. She found her quill beside her, dipped it, and scrawled out, _That didn't answer much._

_Didn't it? I've given you a way to come see me without the Doctor's help._

Luna went still.

Tom wrote again: You_ don't want me to be alone, do you? You're the only one I trust._

Luna traced the word _trust._

Tom's next message was concise: _Do you trust me?_

_That's a silly question. That's not even the point. Whether I trust you or not, how would I acquire a time turner?_

_I already acquired it. You would only have to retrieve it._

_Where is it?_

_Say you trust me. Say you won't tell the Doctor. Say you'll come straightaway._


End file.
